"Karl Edward Wagner - Cold Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

Sebbei, her mind still crawling with fear and loathing. The shock
of confronting Gaethaa and his men had been brutal, and her
concern for Kane was obscured by the pall of revulsion she had
felt on touching their thoughts. Her soul felt outraged at the
contact. Never had she experienced such a barrage of depraved,
bestial images and cravings. Kane's mind was altogether alien to
her, and she took care never to reach too deep within its tortuous
depths. But among the thoughts of Gaethaa's band outright
cruelty reveled alongside demented lusting, and Rehhaile's mind
still cringed in memory, sick and soiled by the touch.
She ran along recklessly, stumbling in her haste, avoiding
jarring collision time and again by the closest margins. To her
sightless mind the twisting alleys of Sebbei assumed a bewildering
pattern of clarity and darkness. Wherever possible Rehhaile cast
out her mind to draw sight from another. At fortunate moments
she made contact with one of the townspeople who was in the
vicinity and through whose eyes she could see a portion of the
course she followed. But in deserted Sebbei such chance
encounters were too few, and more often Rehhaile found her
path blotted out in darkness. Where there were no other's eyes
through which she could see, she attempted to make a detour by
reaching out to touch another nearby mind and follow a
circuitous route along this region of light. But this wasted too
many invaluable minutes, and Rehhaile was forced to plunge into
the darkened segments of the labyrinth frequently—there to rely
on shadowy hints from distant minds, or to feet her way along
blindly. Although she knew the streets of Sebbei well, these
passages of absolute blindness placed deadly obstacles in her
search for Kane.
As she had felt certain she would, Rehhaile found Kane at the
abandoned Nandai villa. Gasping for breath she ran through the
walled gardens, her remaining steps made certain as Kane
watched her disheveled approach. Kane had been half asleep,
moodily contemplating the late afternoon sun from the shade of a
densely laced roof of floral vine. A nearly drained amphora of
thin Demornte wine leaned beside him, still damp from the cool
waters of the lake. Alongside rested a bowl of strawberry domes.
"Hello, Rehhaile," he greeted her thickly, rising to his feet at
the panic that lined her face. "Hey, what the hell's the matter?
Somebody chasing you?"
"Kane!" Exhaustion forced her words out in strangled bursts.
"Kane! You're in danger here! There're some men in Sebbei!
They've come to kill you! They've been searching for you for
weeks! They know you're in Sebbei! They'll be coming here to
kill you as soon as they find out where you are! They'll be here
any minute! They're going to kill you!"
Desperately Kane fought to command his semi-drunken
faculties. "Men in Sebbei looking for me!" he exploded. "How
many? Who are they? How are they armed? How do you know
they're on my trail?"