"Daley, Brian - Coramonde 01 - The Doomfarers of Coramande UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daley Brian)

NERVOUS, whispered conversations sprang up among the courtiers. Fania glanced about her in sudden, imperious anger.
"Where are my stepson's mentors, Eliatim and Faur-buhl?" she demanded.
The majordomo, resplendent in filigreed cloak and bright sash, carrying his staff of office, stepped forward and bowed. "Your Majesty," he intoned, "Eliatim accompanies guests of state home to then1 embassy houses and the philosopher Faurbuhl seems nowhere to be found."
"In that case, have the Prince taken to his rooms and left in the care of the Lady Duskwind."
Springbuck was hoisted and carted away as she turned to the Court.
"Have the servants rinse clean the floors. Fetch drink and chargers of food and let the musicians strike up."
As the Prince's bearers exited the Court, he groggily heard the crowd call tentatively for an air wherewith to dance. In quick fashion the arena was changed back to a ballroom; delicate feet would soon mince where the blood of men had been but a short time before.
Springbuck ascended slowly from his bodiless fog, jounced along, slung over an armored shoulder for a trip that seemed endless. Then there was the sound of a discreet knocking, the officer's respectful voice: "My Lady Duskwind?"
"Yes?"
"It's Captain Brodur, and we have the Prince with us, my Lady."
What odd inflection was that in Captain Brodur's
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THE DOOMFARERS OF CORAMONDE
voice? Springbuck wondered dazedly. Was it urgent, almost nervous? His wits were beginning to return and he felt a growing desire to vomit.
"He is somewhat, umm, incapacitated," Brodur continued, "and the Queen instrЧ"
"Oh! Bring him in and leave him on the bed. I shall attend to him. Only wait a moment when I unbolt the door, then you may enter."
The enlisted man made a rude, whispered jest at the Lady's expense and was rebuked by his officer as the two brought their burden into the room and dropped him onto the brocatelle spread of his wide bed. He bounced once on the soft mattress and lay in a sprawl, holding down bile.
The instant Springbuck heard the door close, he vaulted clumsily from the bed to stand and take his bearings, bracing himself both literally and figuratively. With Eliatim, his instructor-in-arras and warfare, away, he wouldn't be under the close scrutiny he'd endured lately. Had the captain left for good, thinking he'd be unconscious for a while? The certainty was suddenly hi him that his chance to escape had come on this least likely occasion.
He couldn't see Duskwind and so assumed that she was in the bath chamber. Crossing to one of his wardrobe chests, he extracted three broad, silken headbands, then leaped back to stand beside the door leading to the bath. Watching it carefully, he groaned as realistically as he could.
"Coming, my love," Duskwind called from the next room. "You drank overmuch, perhaps? I'll ease your sufferings; we'll see what steam and massage can do to help it".
So saying, she opened the door and walked into the bedroom. She must have been preparing to bathe when the guardsmen had knocked, he reflected in the brief moment in which she stood with her back to him, puzzled by his absence. She was naked, her honey-streaked hair unbound and the big knuckle-shield rings missing from her slim hands.
He pounced on her from behind, snatching her wrists from her sides and drawing them together at the small
Of Deaths, Of Departure 15
of her back. She gasped in surprise but couldn't turn around, as he confined her hands with two deft loops of a headband.
"Springbuck, is that you? Stop it! This is no time for drunken games, you idiot!" There was a strange, sharp note in her voice that he'd never heard there before. She squirmed and struggled in his grip and he couldn't have answered her if he'd wanted, because he held the remaining two headbands in clenched teeth.
Tightening the second loop, he whirled her around, tripped her and lowered her to the thick carpet on her stomach, straddling her.
Alarmed now, she shrilled, "You mustn't do this! Listen to meЧ" \
He'd used the second headband as a gag. The third he fastened around her vigorously kicking legs, fettering her at the ankles. Lifting her as carefully as he could manage under the circumstances, he carried the wildly protesting Duskwind to the bed. Even then he found himself marveling at the warmth of her smooth, brown-gold skin and the fragrance of her, as he threw her across the covers. As a precaution to her thrashing efforts to free herself, he added extra bindings and, out of modesty, pulled the covers over her, leaving only her' head and graceful feet exposed.
He bent to peer into her gray eyes. "I'm sorry," he told his lover, "but I'm leaving and I've decided that there's no place for a highborn and gentle Lady on the journey I mean to make." At this her eyes went wide and she began to shake her head violently, attempting to speak through the gag.
He nodded sadly. "Yes, I must go and I cannot take you, though life will be desolate without you." This last was rather an exaggeration; he looked forward to going forth a free agent. But he was fond of her, had been happy with her. She had even consoled him against his pending combat with the vague reassurance that something would happen to prevent it.
Well, now something would.
Duskwind shut her eyes tightly in exasperation, then stared imploringly skyward. Perplexed, he nevertheless decided that he had spent enough time with her. He
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went to another chest, dug under some robes of state and drew forth the things he had assembled for flight. He unlaced his buskins and threw them to one side, took off his tunic and removed his copper bracelets and bandeau. These he kicked into a corner, done with them for all time. Turning then to his preparations, he was arrested by a glimpse of himself in the cheval glass which stood against the wall. He moved closer and regarded himself, an open-faced young man hi his nineteenth year.
Smiling experimentally at the mirror Springbuck was rewarded with a totally unremarkable smile. He was positive that he would attract no attention or recognition as the Prince. He felt stirrings of confidence that his escape would be successful.
He abruptly remembered the door and whirled on it in apprehension. It was closed but unlatched. Thankful that Duskwind's one outcry had elicited no inquiries, he darted to the door and shot the bolt to, congratulating himself on his luck and, at the same time, feeling a growing knot in his stomach, fear reaction from the events in the throne room and an ache to be away.
He" knew brief regret that Faurbuhl was not to be found. He had considered taking the old philosopher with him, though he had revealed nothing of his plans to his teacher. Indeed, the idea had come full-blown a week before, hi the strange period between waking and sleeping when the mind was most flexible and receptive. A whisper of a suggestion was enough, and he knew that he must escape, and in that same moment was glavanized to search out the magician Andre de-Courteney and the madman Van Duyn.
Forcing himself to matters at hand, and putting Faurbuhl out of his thoughts, he looked to his equipment. He had decided upon and surreptitiously collected the costume of a bravo of Alebowrene, subdominion of Coramonde. Though he knew there would be several of such men in Earthiast during the High Durbar preceding the death duel for the throne, the clothing of a servant or merchant would have been less conspicuous, so that Springbuck approached his adventure with perhaps more romantic notions than he admitted to himself.
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He donned the brief cincture, comfortably supple and, hi his opinion, overwhelmingly preferable to stiff, heavy robes of state. He then strapped to each forearm the leather demisleeves which guarded against wounds from wrist to elbow. It was difficult work manipulating the numerous buckles on each leather with one hand, hampered in fastening the second by the hand-cupping cuff on the first. Still, these were an infighter's defense he'd used before and he knew their value well. He pulled on high cavalryman's boots and picked up his sword, his newfound sword.
A curious weapon. He'd come across it poking around hi the older, ignored rooms of the armories at Earthfast. Basket-hilted, it was much like a cavalry saber except that the blade was only slightly curved and a bit lighter than that, made of some unfamiliar, pewter-looking metal. On the pommel was struck a single complex glyphic which the Prince with his sketchy knowledge of such things, found undecipherable. On either side of the blade, just above the narrow fullers, was written the name Bar, an odd-seeming name for a sword, evocative of defense rather than offense. It's most puzzling aspect, however, was that even after obvious long neglect Bar was bright, and its edge sharper than any he'd ever thumbed. Convinced he'd found a weapon of some special property, he'd kept his discovery to himself. Its scabbard had been unserviceable with age, and so with some difficulty he'd procured another to accommodate it, of black, polished fish skin with bindings and fittings of white brass, and a belt to bear it.
He buckled the belt about his hips and fastened the tie-down around his leg. Then he slipped his parrying dagger into the sheath stitched inside the top of his left boot. Its hooked pommel rode just high enough to protrude from the boot top below his sword, ready to be seized at need in his left hand.
He'd thought of wearing a helmet and his fine chain mail, but discarded the idea of several accounts. For one thing, both of his suits of mail were known in and around Earthfast. The risk of recognition would be increased, even if he were well cloaked and hooded. For
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another, he didn't care for its weight, since he wished to travel as lightly as possible. And lastly, he'd never grown to like the burden of armor as had his half brother Strongblade. Though trained as most young nobles were in riding, running, jumping trenches, climbing and fighting encased hi mail or plate, he had always hated its hindrance. He much preferred to be free of its encumbrance like the Alebowrenian or the Horse-blooded of the High Ranges.
Almost ready to leave his ancestral home, he thought that his renowned forebear Sharplance might have felt just so, fleeing the distant East in the dim past. He went to fetch the cache of coins secreted behind a carven ivory panel in the bathing chamber, stopping first to check the bonds of the still-furious Duskwind. He strode into the next room, anxious to be away, but stopped in midstride at the sight which greeted him
there.
The large pool contained no water, but rather the body of Faurbuhl the philosopher. His face was blackened, eyes swollen and darkened tongue bulging from his mouth, hands still clawing hi death at the garrote yet inbedded hi his neck. Springbuck experienced momentary dizziness and a refusal to absorb the death of his would-be companion, who stared sightlessly at the decorative water apertures above his head.