"Bradley,.Marion.Zimmer.-.Darkover.-.Clingfire.2.-.Zandru's.Forge.(.With.Deborah.J.Ross)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

The outer wall of his room was rounded like the turret outside, with a bed built into the single straight wall. Set between the two windows, a rack of hooks held cloaks and ordinary clothing. A small chest of carved blackthorn wood was more than enough room for his few personal possessions. Because he was Hastur, he also had a small heating brazier and a desk. Unlike most of the other novices, he could read and was being tutored in other things a prince must know. He had an aircar at his disposal, a horse stabled below in the town, and many other privileges of his rank.
A copy of Roald Mclnery's Military Tactics lay open on the desk. Carolin strode over and flipped the book closed, impatient with its ponderous style. The material, once he waded through the antiquated language, was interesting enough. Mclnery wrote sensibly about fortifications, supply lines, and positioning of troops. But he also discussed laran weaponry as a natural and inevitable extension of force of arms. Some of the weapons were unknown to Carolin, but others were all too familiar to a royal heir in these chaotic times. Linked telepathically to their trainers, sentry birds could spy out an army's position, clingfire could turn man and beast into living torches, relays could send messages faster than horse or aircar, and small circles of leronyn could control the very minds of the enemy.
Yet even the powerful Towers of Neskaya and Tramontana could not protect themselves from the strife and chaos of the world outside. Drawn into war a generation ago by the command of their respective liege lords, the two Towers had ended by destroying each other. Most of their highly trained and Gifted workers had been killed or mentally crippled.
No one was sure exactly how it happened, but the ballads suggested that Neskaya had been engaged in the development of a new, fearsome weapon that was accidentally deployed

during a crucial confrontation, It was said that deep within the rubble, eerie blue flames still smoldered, feeding on the very substance of the stones.
Once Carolin had met a survivor of that horrendous battle, a distant Hastur cousin who had been leronis at Tramontana. Old Lady Bronwyn had escaped the worst of the conflagration, but when he asked her about it, she had turned to him with a look of such desolation that his small boy's heart faltered in his chest. She had not answered; her expression had been enough.
Stories of how the Towers had been drawn into the war between Hastur and a ruthlessly ambitious neighbor, Deslucido of Ambervale, still circulated in the boys' dormitories. It was said that the Keeper of Neskaya, in love with a leronis at Tramontana, had sacrificed himself in defiance of his lord's orders in order to save her, but in vain, for both had gone up in flames. He still didn't know if that was true, or any of the other tales whispered around the fireplace during the long winter nights, but he wished they were.
With the defeat of Ambervale and all its conquered provinces, Darkover had achieved only an uneasy peace. A hundred kingdoms still dotted the landscape. Larger ones preyed on the small and then fractured in succession disputes and insurrections. From his earliest boyhood, Carolin had heard the lords of his own family arguing, debating, struggling to restrain the worst abuses of laran weaponry. He remembered his uncle Rafael saying, over and over again, "There must be a way."
The ruins of the Towers and the desolation of the Lake of Hali, the result of an ancient disaster known as the Cataclysm, remained as mute witnesses to their failure.
Carolin snapped out of his reverie. He stood before his own door, fingers brushing the wooden latch, as if he'd been caught in a waking dream. When he returned to his window, the Ride-now boy was gone. Carolin knew, with that atavistic certainty, that they would meet again.
Carolin made his way down the stairs and across the central room to the smaller chamber where his afternoon session,

practicing the basics of monitoring with the other beginning students, met. He caught a snatch of conversation between the older workers as they sat together before the cold fireplace.
"... Ridenow ..." "... who sent him? ..."
As he crossed the room, the two broke off their conversation. Darkeyed Marella looked up at Carolin and smiled. Only a few years his senior, she had flirted with him at Midsummer Festival, a tenday after he'd arrived at Arilinn. Despite his efforts to behave properly, she'd figured prominently in his dreams for a while. Carolin knew she was aware of the effect she had on him, for at his grandfather's court, he'd been the target of many feminine wiles. The combination of youth, good looks, and a crown attracted eligible ladies like a honeycomb attracted scorpion-ants. Only with his kinswoman, Maura Elhalyn, and Jandria, the cousin of his foster-brother Orain, did he feel fully at ease, but they were back at Carcosa.
Marella's companion, a slab-faced older man named Richardo, who never seemed to smile at anything, got to his feet. He nodded to Carolin and hurried away. Color rising to her cheeks, Marella followed him, so that Carolin had no chance to ask questions.
It was just as well. He had been at Arilinn long enough to know that telepaths operated under a different set of social proprieties than ordinary people did. Some kinds of privacy were impossible, such as sexual attraction. Casual physical contact could be as offensive as an outright assault when people lived in such intimacy. Yet no code of Tower etiquette could overcome Carolin's inborn curiosity. It was a fault he'd long struggled to overcome.
Although Carolin's family, the Hasturs of Carcosa, worshiped the Lord of Light, as was proper for the Comyn caste, he had also studied the teachings of the cristoforos. One prayer, in particular, had struck him as appropriate to his own character, Grant me, O Bearer of the World's Burdens, to know what Thou givest me to know . . . Sometimes that meant to keep his nose out of affairs which might cause him to lose it, and his entire head as well. At other times, such as this one, the prayer suggested that it was his right and responsibility to

find out what was going on, although it did not imply how or when.
At his uncle's court, there was hardly a moment when some plot or scheme was not simmering. Political undercurrents were as numerous and changing as motes of dust in the air. Carolin had learned patience and the usefulness of a blankly innocent expression. In due time, he would find out.
?
Carolin focused his thoughts on the task at hand, starstone practice with the other beginners. The class took place in a small, airy room that had been pleasant when he arrived at Arilinn in the summer, but now felt drafty. In another month or so, they would all be bundled in outdoor clothing against the chill.
He took his place around the worktable with the other students, three boys he didn't know well. Their teacher was Cerriana, an older girl with fiery red hair who had little interest in socializing with boys the age of her baby brother. She worked as a monitor while she continued her own training.
Valentina, youngest of the novices, was absent, probably because she was ill again. Like many of her family, the Aillards, she was in frail health and had been sent to Arilinn in the hope that, with skilled help, she might survive the turmoil of threshold sickness. Carolin had developed a light case of it himself, a few months of queasiness and quick temper. He'd been told that it was often severe, even life-threatening, in those with exceptional talent. The combination of the awakening of laran and adolescent sexual energy, which were carried by the same energon channels in the body, could create fatal overloads. Fidelis, the senior monitor, had mentioned that rarely, perhaps once or twice in a generation, laran of extraordinary power arose earlier, in childhood, so smoothly and completely there was never any difficulty.
With her usual methodical care, Cerriana directed the students through the morning's routine. Together, they took out their starstones and began as usual by simply gazing into them, watching the patterns of blue light.

Like all the members of his family, Carolin had been given a stone of superior quality, medium-sized but beautifully cut, clear and faintly luminescent. Now as he cupped it in his bare hand, the stone warmed against his skin. His starstone had grown noticeably brighter since his arrival at Arilinn, the flashes of brilliance more intense. Sometimes he sensed the crystalline structure that would focus and amplify his own natural psychic abilities. Cerriana had said that the more he worked with the stone, the more it would become attuned to him.
After the preliminary exercises, Cerriana brought out a collection of objectsЧfeathers, thin silver coins, small cubes and dowels of woodЧand distributed them to the students. Using their starstones, the students were to focus their minds upon the object with the goal of either lifting or sliding it across the table.
Carolin, as a beginner, was still working with feathers. The task, which had seemed all but impossible when he first attempted it, now began to make sense, although he had not as yet had any luck in producing so much as a quiver in the feather. He'd made the mistake of looking directly at it, as if by sheer force of will he could cause it to rise. Now he gazed at it only long enough to fix its features in his mind, its size and color, the curve of the quill, the curl of the down. Then he looked deep into his starstone, building a mental picture of the feather. He tried to imagine the air beneath it rising like the waves of heat above a summer field.
The feather quivered, tilted. He sensed tiny currents of air pressing against its weight. This time, he decided to keep his attention on the air as it swirled upward.
Let the feather go where it wills, he told himself.
The air felt hot, exciting. He thought of storm clouds, mountains of gray-white, billowing to fill the sky. A taste and flash like lightning flickered across his senses.
"Carolin!"
He jumped, his vision leaping into focus. The feather sat on the table just as before. Then it burst into flame.
Lord of Light!

Without thinking, Carolin grabbed the feather. The fire went out immediately, but not before it had singed his fingers. He yelped and clutched his hand. His starstone went rolling across the table. Cerriana caught it just before it tumbled off the edge.
Fire erupted inside Carolin's skull. He could no longer feel his burned hand. For an awful moment, his lungs locked, unable to draw in air. He heard confused voices in the distance.
The next instant, something small and cool was pressed into his hand. He could breathe again. His vision seeped back and he looked into Cerriana's eyes. They were dark with concern. Her hand overlaid his, curling his fingers around his starstone.
"WhatЧ" What happened to me?
"I touched your starstone. I must now monitor you to make sure you have taken no harm from it."
Carolin's eyes stung and he felt shaken to his bones. He was grateful when Cerriana dismissed the class. All he wanted was to be left alone. He clenched the starstone, pressing it to his heart. His fingers throbbed where he'd touched the burning feather. The muscles of his belly quivered. But he was Hastur, heir to the throne, and it was not proper that he behave like a whimpering child.
Only a moment had passed. Cerriana still waited for the answer to her request. As an Arilinn-trained monitor, she scrupulously observed the formalities of permission. This was not an emergency; she would not enter the energy fields of his body against his will. Finally, he lifted his head and gestured to Cerriana that he was ready.
As she worked, relief and a sense of well-being spread throughout his body. Frayed nerves relaxed and the burns on his fingers cooled. His heartbeat steadied and his breathing came more freely.
A short time later, she announced with a smile that he had not been damaged by either the fire or the accidental contact with his starstone.
"I don't understand," Carolin said. Although he felt physically well enough, except for the fading heat on his palms, he couldn't think straight. His skull seemed to be packed with feathers. "Other people have handled my stone beforeЧHanna

at home, you and Fidelis and Auster here. I've never had a reaction like this."