"E. C. Tubb - Dumarest 16 - Haven of Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tubb E. C)

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Haven of Darkness
#16 in the Dumarest series

E. C Tubb



Chapter One

Delusia came unexpectedly so that she continued riding
towards the north, forgetting the passage of time in the
stimulating conversation with Charles. He looked well as he rode
easily at her side, his clothes the same as she remembered him
wearing when, shortly after they had first met, he had attended
her on a hunt. The bag had been negligible; some vermin tossed
aside on the homeward journey, but the pleasure had been great.
They had wandered, hands touching, talking of a variety of
things with a irresistible torrent of words. Normally shy she had
found a release in his presence while he, perhaps amused at her
young eager attention, had relaxed the guard he usually wore.

Now, riding close to her side, he was the same suave,
charming man she had known when little more than a girl. A
long time ago now and she had known him when he looked other
than he did at the moment. There had been lines tracing the
smooth curve of his cheek and a sagging of the flesh beneath the
chin. The old, familiar manner had become crusted with
accumulated layers of distrust and, when he had finally died,
killed in some stupid quarrel, he had resembled an old and tired
man rather than the youth she chose to remember.

"Charles!" She lifted her whip and pointed ahead to where a
narrow cleft showed in the bleak wall of the Iron Mountains.
"That gulley, you see it? The first to reach it claims a forfeit. Go!"

A childish game and one she hadn't played for years now and
she had a moment's wonder as to why she should choose to play
it now. A return to her youth, perhaps, her childhood? The
fiction of a happier time? If so she knew better, for her childhood
had not been happy and the things it contained were best
forgotten.