"Dragonlance - Deathgate Cycle 02 - Elven Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deathgate Cycle)

"Oh, it doesn't, does it?" cried Calandra, hurling her verbal spear straight for her victim's heart. "Then why is my father importing a human priest?"

The astrologer's eyes widened in shock. The high collar turned from Calandra to the wretched Lenthan, who found himself much disconcerted by it.

"Is this true, Lenthan Quindiniar?" demanded the incensed wizard. "You have sent for a human priest?"

"I-I-I-" was all Lenthan could manage.

"I have been deceived by you, sir," stated the astrologer, his dignity increasing every moment and so, it seemed, the length of his collar. "You led me to believe that you shared our interest in the stars, in their cycles and their places in the

heavens."

"I was! I am!" Lenthan wrung his soot-blackened hands.

"You professed to be interested in the scientific study of how these stars rule our lives-"

"Blasphemy!" cried Calandra with a shudder of her bony frame.

"And yet now I find you consorting with-with-"

Words failed the wizard. His pointed collar appeared to close around him so that all that could be seen above it were his glittering, infuriated eyes.

"No! Please let me explain!" gabbled Lenthan. "You see, my son, Paithan, told me about the belief the humans have that there are people living in those stars and I thought-"

"Paithan told you!" gasped Calandra, pouncing on a new

culprit,

"People living there!" gasped the astrologer, his voice muffled by the collar.

"But it does seem likely . . . and certainly explains why the ancients traveled to the stars and it fits with what our priests teach us that when we die we become one with the stars and I truly do miss Elithenia. . . ."

El ve n Star

19*

The last was said in a wretched, pleading tone that moved Lenthan's daughter to pity. In her own way, Calandra loved her father, just as she loved her brother and younger sister. It was a stern and unbending and impatient kind of love, but love it was and she moved over to put thin, cold fingers on her father's arm.

"There, Papa, don't upset yourself. I didn't mean to make you unhappy. It's just that I'd think you would have discussed this with me instead of ... instead of the crowd at the Golden Mead!" Calandra could not forebear a sob. Pulling out a prim-and-proper lace-edged handkerchief, she clamped it over her nose and mouth.

His daughter's tears had the effect (not unintended) of completely crushing Lenthan Quindiniar into the mossy floor and burying him twelve hands2 down. Her weeping and the wizard's trembling collar points were too much for the middle-aged elf.

"You're both right," said Lenthan, glancing from one to the other sorrowfully. "I can see that now. I've made a terrible mistake and when the priest comes, I'll tell him to go away immediately."

"When he comes!" Calandra raised dry eyes and stared at her father. "What do you mean 'when he comes'? Paithan said he wouldn't come!"

"How does Paithan know?" Lenthan asked, considerably perplexed. "Did he talk to him after I did?" The elf thrust a waxen hand into a pocket of his silk vest and dragged out a crumpled sheet of foolscap. "Look, my dear." He exhibited the letter.

Calandra snatched it and read it, her eyes might have burned holes in the paper.