"Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

“Oh.” Rastim said, shifting uncertainly. Rian noted that he didn’t look quite so unconcerned about the
Adversary as he had implied before. Maybe the Ariaden believed more of that demon story than he had
thought.
Maskelle was looking up at the cloud-heavy sky. “When we get up on the road, move the body to
my wagon.”
Grumbling, but not too loudly, the Ariaden made ready to leave. They were so afraid of the cursed
puppet Rian knew it must have done much worse than walk out during plays or knock on its box. Rastim
seemed to be the only one nervous of the prospect of visiting a Temple of the Adversary; but then the
others seemed to know little of the Koshans. Not that Rian knew much of them either.
Until crossing the river he had avoided even the small villages, in case the hunters the Holder Lord’s
Heir had sent dared to trespass so far on Imperial territory. One night not long after he had crossed the
border he had stumbled on what seemed to be a small abandoned shrine, and driven by pouring rain and
exhaustion, he had spent the night on the stone flags under the dome, looked down on by the hundreds of
faces carved into the walls. In the morning he had realized what he had been too dazed to notice the night
before: the shrine had been empty but clean swept, undisturbed by animal droppings or even blown
leaves and dust, and he knew it wasn’t abandoned. He had fled, not wanting to be seen by even some
lonely Koshan monk-caretaker.
As Rian helped harness the oxen, he watched the post guards watching them. The factor came out on
a balcony, wrapped in a sleeping robe and a disgruntled air, but no one attempted to interfere with them.
Either the post guards weren’t inclined to pursue a problem that seemed to be leaving of its own accord,
or the factor wasn’t anxious for another confrontation with Maskelle. From the gossip Rian had heard
from the boatmen, everyone who worked in the compound agreed that she had gotten the better of him
in the first one.
Once clear of the compound, Maskelle’s wagon took the lead with Old Mali at the reins. It was so
dark up on the road that even though each wagon had a lantern hanging from the box, the Ariaden called
Firac still had to walk ahead with another lamp. The breeze had died and there was an odd kind of
suspended silence in the night that Rian didn’t particularly like. The cool air was still heavy with water, but
the rain hadn’t returned, and without it the jungle at the edge of the road was almost too quiet. It wasn’t
true jungle; Rian knew there were farms and little villages all through here, and the belts of trees
concealed cultivated fields, but for all that they could be in the middle of wild nowhere.
He walked back down the road a short distance past the reach of the lamplight and then returned to
stand beside Maskelle, who was leaning on her staff and watching the wagons crawl by from the muddy
verge. “They’re not following us,” Rian said, not that he was much reassured by it.
“But something else might be?” Maskelle asked, watching him.
He shrugged, feeling he was being tested. Maybe she wanted to know how much of the night’s
ambient tension he could sense. “It just feels wrong, like something’s breathing down my neck.”
She smiled pityingly. “The Infinite touches everyone,” she said, but her tone was more self-mocking
than anything else.
“Tell it to keep its hands to itself,” Rian suggested, and went to check the other side of the road.
Maskelle went up to ride on her wagon next to Old Mali and Rian walked beside it. They kept
moving at the same slow pace, seeing no one else on the road. Rian still felt they were being followed,
though he knew there were no wagons or horses on the road behind them, not for several hundred yards
at least. He had spent most of his early life either hunting or being hunted by raiding parties of the nomad
tribes in the mountains above Tarkat. His instincts told him something was stalking them, and if it wasn’t
the post guards sent by the vengeful factor, then it was something worse, from the river. In the dark he
could see Maskelle’s head which kept turning toward the dark belt of trees, which didn’t help either.
The time passed and they travelled quietly; only the occasional snuffling of an ox or a sleepy murmur
from one of the other wagons disturbed the peace. After a time, Maskelle climbed down from the wagon
and walked along the roadside next to Rian, the glow of the lamp tied to the wagonboard lighting their
way. She muttered, “If it has any wits at all, it has to know we’re making for the city boundary and Illsat