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The Hidden City

The Hidden City

Titel: The Hidden City Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: David Eddings
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of his fingers.
    The sense of it came washing back to him. It was something on the order of recognizing an accent—except that it was done when nobody was talking. ‘It’s a Styric,’ he said quietly.
    ‘Zalasta?’
    ‘No, I don’t believe so. I think I’d recognize him. It’s somebody I’ve never been around before.’
    ‘Not too much wood, my Lord,’ Khalad said aloud. ‘This pile has to get us through breakfast too, you know.’
    ‘Good thinking,’ Berit approved. He reached out again, very cautiously. ‘He’s moving away,’ he muttered. ‘How did you know we were being watched?’
    ‘I could feel it,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘I always know when somebody’s watching me. How noisy is it when you get in touch with Aphrael?’
    ‘That’s one of the good spells. It doesn’t make a sound.’
    ‘You’d better tell her about this. Let her know that we are being watched and that it’s a Styric who’s doing the watching.’
    Khalad knelt and began to carefully stack his armload of broken-off limbs on their campfire. ‘Your disguise seems to be working,’ he noted.
    ‘How did you arrive at that?’
    ‘They wouldn’t waste a Styric on us if they knew who you really are.’
    ‘Unless they don’t have anybody left except Styrics. Stragen’s celebration of the Harvest Festival might have been more effective than we thought.’
    ‘We could probably argue about that all night. Just tell Aphrael about our visitor out there. She’ll pass it on to the others, and we’ll let them get the headache from trying to sort it out with logic.’
    ‘Aren’t you curious about it?’
    ‘Not so curious that I’m going to lose any sleep over it. That’s one of the advantages of being a peasant, my Lord. We’re not required to come up with the answers to these earth-shaking questions. You aristocrats get the pleasure of doing that.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Berit said sourly.
    ‘No charge, my Lord,’ Khalad grinned.
    Sparhawk had never actually worked for a living before, and he discovered that he did not like it very much. He quickly grew to hate Captain Sorgi’s thick-necked bo’sun. The man was crude, stupid, and spitefully cruel. He fawned outrageously whenever Sorgi appeared on the quarterdeck, but when the captain returned below decks, the bo’sun’s natural character re-asserted itself. He seemed to take particular delight in tormenting the newest members of the crew, assigning them the most tedious, exhausting and demeaning tasks aboard ship. Sparhawk found himself quite suddenly in full agreement with Khalad’s class prejudices, and sometimes at night he found himself contemplating murder.
    ‘Every man hates his employer, From,’ Stragen told him, using Sparhawk’s assumed name. ‘It’s a very natural part of the scheme of things.’
    ‘I could stand him if he didn’t deliberately go out of his way to be offensive,’ Sparhawk growled, scrubbing at the deck with his block of pumice-stone.
    ‘He’s paid to be offensive, my friend. Angry men work harder. Part of your problem is that you always look him right in the eye. He wouldn’t single you out the way he does if you’d keep your eyes lowered. If you don’t, this is going to be a very long voyage for you.’
    ‘Or a short one for him,’ Sparhawk said darkly.
    He considered it that night as he tried, without much success, to sleep in his hammock. He fervently wished that he could get his hands on the idiot who had decided that humans could sleep in hammocks. The roll of the ship made it swing from side to side, and Sparhawk continually felt that he was right on the verge of being thrown out.
    ‘Anakha.’ The voice was only a whisper in his mind.
    Sparhawk was stunned. ‘Blue Rose?’ he said.
    ‘Prithee, Anakha, do not speak aloud. Thy voice is as the thunder in mine ears. Speak silently in the halls of thine awareness. I will hear thee.’
    ‘How is this possible?’ Sparhawk framed the thought. ‘Thou art confined.’
    ‘Who hath power to confine me, Anakha? When thou art alone and thy mind is clear of other distraction, we may speak thus.’
    ‘I did not know that.’
    ‘Until now, it was not needful for thee to know.’
    ‘I see. But now it is?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How dost thou penetrate the barrier of the gold?’
    ‘It is no barrier to me, Anakha. Others may not sense me within the confines of thine excellent receptacle. I, however, may reach out to thee in this manner. This is particularly true when we are so

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