"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 03 - Skybowl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

"They had to train people to replace those who were killed. As you know, Antoun is extremely giftedЧif extremely antiquated, like us," she added wryly.
"How did you find out that he's joined Andry's cause?"
"I have a source." She opened her eyes to their widest and most innocent.
"And that's all you're going to tell me."
"You know me so well," she purred.
Meath snorted.
She pushed herself to her feet. "I'm going to take a nap. The moons will set early tonight, and I'll be up all the rest of it on starlight."
"How's Hollis?"
"Pretending to be brave. Maarken thinks he has to hold
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her together, and she's the same way about him, so they've both been lying to each other and everyone else for three solid days now."
"If only we'd taught ChaylaЧ"
"If only she'd been interested in something other than medicine," Sioned reminded him. "All she wanted to learn was how to use a fingerflame to give her light to work by. It's nobody's fault, Meath. Oh, Maarken and Hollis think it's theirs, for not forcing her to learn how to go Sunrunning. Right now Chayla is probably damning herself for the same thing. But Tobren keeps telling us what we've been trained to think: faradh 'im can only be taught at Goddess Keep."
"Something you ignore when it suits you."
"Who gave Pol his first lessons?" she challenged.
"At least I asked permission. You never bothered." He made a little gesture of apology. "That wasn't fair. You did what you thought was right."
"Not right, necessarily. Expedient. They aren't always the same thing." She paused, smiling again. "Meath, put your rings back on."
He stared at his naked hands for a moment, then quickly replaced the six circles of silver and gold. "Goddess-ЧI didn't even feel they were gone!"
"I haven't missed mine in years. Jihan was right. You don't need rings to be a Sunrunner."
"There's a dangerous idea in that somewhere."
She almost laughed. "Somewhere? It's right out in the open! If any gifted person can set up a school for others of our kind, what need for Goddess Keep?" She started for the door. "Andry would call that a sin. Which is why it occurs to me more and more often."
Meath frowned his confusion. "But you said we're going to need him."
"Did I?" She gave him a curious glance over her shoulder.
"Sioned! Stop playing chess games with words!"
"Better words than livesЧthe way Andrade did," she answered with sudden vehemence,
"She's eighteen years dead. Don't mistake Andry for her," Meath warned.
Sioned tightened her fingers around the door handle. "No fear of that. He's worse. Andrade believed in what she did as a servant of the GoddessЧthe most important one, to be
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sure. But Andry, he believes in himself. He doesn't serve the GoddessЧhe thinks of himself as her lover."
"Sioned!"
"It's true and we all know it," she said, and shut the door behind her.
All during the afternoon, while two of her children began their paths to becoming Sunrunners, Sionell prowled Feruche. When she appeared in the kitchens for the third time, the cook had compassion on her nerves and kindly allowed her to help wash vegetables. As the sun vanished and torches were lit, Hollis arrived and was similarly provided with something to do.
It was absurd, really. Two highborn ladies, scrubbing and peeling and chopping as if they were servants. But it was good, honest work, it demanded their attention if they weren't to lose parts of their fingers to sharp knives, and it had the virtue of being useful.
Which was at the heart of each woman's unease. Useless-ness.
"Ell, we're out of whitespice," Hollis said, up to her elbows in a cauldron about to be put on the hearth. "Will you run down to the storeroom for me, please?"
"Whitespice?" The cook sniffed disdainfully on his way past. "Better to bring up enough strong wine to get everyone drunk, so they won't taste this slop. Ah, Goddess, for the old days at Skybowl!"
The butcher, who stood next to Sionell shredding meat into a pot, whispered, "And now he'll treat us to the full list of his triumphs. Escape while you can, my lady."
Sure enough, the cook had launched into tender reminiscences of a rolled roastЧfeaturing kid wrapped in lamb wrapped in venison, the whole of it covered in liver paste, baked in a pastry shell, and "crowned with the merest drizzle of berry compote that we made ourselves, for only a fool trusts an apprentice with a sauce. And it was stupendous. A masterwork, even for us. We created this marvel for the occasion of Lord Riyan's marriage. Such was its success that we were invited to prepare the Lastday banquet at the next Rialla. Still, even we cannot perform the same feats of art-
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istry for three hundred as can be accomplished for a small party of, say, fifty or sixty, such as the time when we...."
Sionell escaped down the steep cellar stairs, a torch lighting her way. She recalled Riyan and Ruala's wedding feast very well; it set her stomach growling. Opening the heavy wooden door of the storeroom, she took a deep breath of the spicy air and immediately sneezed.
Her nose began to clog as if she had caught a cold. Quickly she located the canisters of whitespice amid boxes and barrels of taze, nuts, dried fruit, and other pungent seasonings that made her eyes water. Thanks to that madman upstairs, their meals were tasty, but it was tricky work feeding an army. While measuring out careful spoonfuls of spice, Sionell mentally tallied the sheep and goats in their courtyard pens, the dressed carcasses hanging in a coldroom deep underneath the castle, and supplies of flour and other staples. Elktrap was supplying Feruche as best it could, but fear of other marauding bands of Vellant'im had stopped shipments for a while. What was here would have to last until they were certain that no one else would be captured as Chayla had been.
Sionell pushed the big door closed with her hip, the torch in one hand and the bowl of whitespice cradled in her other arm. She wanted desperately to wipe her eyes and rub her itchy nose. Another sneeze echoed in the cool stone cellar. "Damn!" she mutteredЧand froze as footsteps not her own sounded softly in the' far darkness.
Children, even ones caught playing where they shouldn't, would have made more noise. Anyone with a reason to be here ought to have seen her and spoken by now. Sionell placed the bowl at her feet, freeing her right hand for the long dagger at her belt. With fire in one hand and steel in the other, she told herself she could fight her way to the stairs and give warning.
She edged toward the stairs, trying to see into the dimness. Cisterns of water and barrels of wine formed a maze that began just within the reach of torchlight. Anyone could be hiding there.
But how would the Vellant'im know any of the secret ways into Feruche? Had they forced Chayla to revealЧ
"Put up your weapons, my lady," said a mocking voice she recognized. "I'm not dangerous. I promise."