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

III. Ripples and Shadows
The moon cast pale light upon Rehhaile's slender body as she
watched Kane moodily toss stones into the lake beneath their
perch. Goose pimples rose on her tanned skin, and she wriggled
over the velvet moss of the bank to press her shivering form
against his. His body was warm, though his mind was distant, and
she rested her head against his shoulder in contentment.
Rehhaile did not share the gloomy apathy, the bitter despair of
her people. She loved the sunlight while the others generally kept
to their shops and houses. As a result her lean figure was tanned
an even brown that matched her unbound hair, and there was a
strong hint of freckles across her face. Her features were
somewhat boldly shaped, although not to the point of losing
femininity. Her breasts were small and firm, her hips
slim—making her appear a few years younger than her twenty
years.
Bunching her long fingers over the massive muscles of Kane's
shoulders and back, she began to massage them, trying to shape
the knotted muscles to the pattern of the ripples on the lake.
Kane seemed to ignore her, but she reached out with her mind
and sensed that she was drawing him into lazy arousal.
For Rehhaile was blind, her wide eyes altogether sightless. Her
mother had died from the plague while Rehhaile yet lay in her
womb. Her father had sworn that death should not take all from
him, and a physician had quickly torn her from the dead womb.
Both father and physician died of the plague within the week, but
somehow Rehhaile had survived while all about her Demornte
was seared by the plague. Someone had taken care of her, for
Demornte was a land of motherless children and childless
mothers. Later she made a living by whatever way she could, for
the most part hanging around Sebbei's sole tavern.
But Rehhaile had been blind since birth. And yet she had in
place of sight an infinitely more precious power of vision. Her
macabre birth, a genetic mutation, some whim of the gods—the
reason was unknowable and unimportant. She was given a
psychic talent that provided a far more wondrous sense of
perception than any human eyes could afford.
Rehhaile could reach out to link her own mind with another.
Through this psychic contact she could share the other person's
perception of his surroundings, in effect see through another's
eyes, hear through his cars, feel through his fingers. And along
with this sharing of sensory impulses, Rehhaile could actually
sense the feelings of another mind—not so much read the
thoughts, but experience for herself the myriad emotions that
drift through the corridors of the mind. Her incredible talent to
see into another human mind established Rehhaile as a sorceress
in the eyes of the townspeople of Sebbei, and in their despair
they accepted this without concern or curiosity.