"David Weber & Linda Evans - Hells Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

tactfulness when the old man turned those longing, puppy-dog eyes in her direction, and Magister
Halathyn had submitted to the inevitable with no more than the odd, heartfelt sigh of mournful regret when
he was sure one of them was listening.
Now the hundred watched the team's junior magister moving through the deep drifts of leaves almost
as silently as his own troopers. Despite—or possibly even because of—the fact that he'd never worked
with Kelbryan before, he was impressed. And, he admitted, attracted.
She opened a leather equipment case on her belt and withdrew one of the esoteric devices of her
profession. Jasak was technically Gifted himself, although his own trace of the talent was so minute that
he was often astonished the testing process had been able to detect it at all. Now, as often, he felt a
vague, indefinable stirring sensation as someone who was very powerfully Gifted indeed brought her Gift
to bear. She gazed down into the crystal display, and her lips moved silently as she powered it up.
Jasak saw the display flicker to life and moved a little closer to look over her shoulder. She sensed
his presence and looked up. For an instant, he thought she was going to be annoyed with him for
crowding her, but then she smiled and tilted her wrist so that he could see the display more clearly.
In many ways, it looked a great deal like a standard Authority navigation unit. He quickly identified
the latitude and longitude readouts, and the built in clocks—one set to the base camp's time, and one
which automatically adjusted to local time on this side of the portal—and the compass and directional
indicator Barris. But there was another arrow in the glassy heart of the sphere of sarkolis crystal, and it
was flanked by two waterfall displays which had never been part of any navigation unit he'd ever used.
"This one," she said quietly, tapping the green waterfall, "indicates the approximate distance. And this
one," she tapped the red waterfall, "indicates its measured field strength. And the arrow, of course," she
grinned, "indicates the direction."
"I've never seen a unit quite like that one," Jasak admitted, and she snorted in amusement.
"That's because Magister Halathyn and I built it ourselves," she told him. "Actually, he did most of the
design work—I was just the grunt technician who put it together."
"Oh, I'm sure," he said, shaking his head.
"No, it's true!" she insisted. "The beauty of it is in the theoretical conception. Once he'd done the
intellectual heavy lifting, actually building the spells was relatively easy. Time consuming, but not difficult."
"Maybe not for you," Jasak said dryly, and she shrugged. "But the important thing," he continued,
allowing her to drop the subject of her own competency, "is that I've never had a nav unit that pointed me
directly at an unexplored portal before. It beats the hell, if you'll pardon the language, out of humping the
standard detectors around the countryside on a blind search pattern. Especially someplace like this—" he
waved a hand at the heavy tree cover "—where it's all but impossible to get a dragon, or even a gryphon,
in for aerial sweeps."
"That's exactly why Magister Halathyn's been working on it for several years now," Kelbryan agreed.
"In fact, the whole reason I let him come out here in the first place—" somehow, Jasak felt confident, her
choice of the verb "let" was probably painfully accurate "—was still let him field test the spellware."
"And is that the reason you're out here, if I may ask?" Jasak inquired.
"Well, for that . . . and to keep an eye on Magister Halathyn," she admitted with a slight smile.
"Which suggests to my keen intelligence that you were, indeed, being overly modest about your
contribution to the project," Jasak said. "Somehow I don't see the Institute letting both of its top
magisters wander around three or four months' travel from home if they weren't both needed."
"I suppose there might be some truth to that," she conceded after a moment. "Although, to be
completely honest, and without trying to undervalue my own contributions to the R&D, the real reason I
insisted on coming was to keep him from wandering around out here to handle any field modifications the
spellware might require. Besides," she smiled infectiously, "it's the first 'vacation' I've taken in over five
years!"
"But why all the secrecy?" Jasak asked. She looked at him, and he shrugged. "The UTTTA must the
champing at the bit to get this deployed, so why was Magister Halathyn so busy insisting that he wasn't
really up to anything?"