"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 1 - Stronghold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Sioned rounded on him. "And I took to princely rule like a sorcerer to dranath, is that it?"
"Partly. I think Lady Merisel had the right idea long agoЧstrongly discouraging trained Sunrunners from marrying princes or athr'im."
"I wasn't the first."
"No. But your grandmother Siona was."
"That only gave Andrade the idea. You were the great experiment."
i;One that failed," he said lightly.
:'This is different, Rohan. Andrade's ambitions were for vou, not for herself. And whatever your disagreements with herЧcaused mostly by meЧ" She held up a hand to stop his interruption. "By me," she repeated. "I'm the one who defied lier by becoming a princess first and a Sunrunner second. But you and she were always working toward the same thing. The power of the High Prince working together with the power of a faradhi. Andry, on the other hand, is ambitious for himself."
"It infuriates you, doesn't it?" he asked softly. "All the ceremony. The ritual."
"Andrade would have cut the rings from her fingers before she'd countenance half of what he's done 'in the Name of the Goddess.' "
Rohan stood and put his arm around her waist. He drew her along the paths to the grotto, speaking only when they stood beside the thin waterfall. "There isn't a way to stop him. All we can do is live with it and hope most people have more sense than to believe in superstition."
She kicked a loose rock into the pond. "He knows what's seen in Fire and Water isn't the destiny of princedoms, it's personal. And it's only what might be. Andrade always said that the future isn't carved in stoneЧand even if it were, stone can be broken."
"If it were a truly reliable skill, it would have become
24 Melanie Rawn
widespread long before this. This is the first time Andry's suggested it. I think he knew all along that he wouldn't have to do it. He just wanted to give the impression that he could."
"That makes it even worse."
He should have known what she would do next, but still was startled when a trickle of Fire crossed the pond, brilliant with color and sternly controlled. He had learned over the years to recognize the elusive response of his own faradhi blood when she worked this way; it was a fragile quiver deep within him, something he could never touch, never use.
She conjured what she had shown him a very long time ago, when they'd both been young and untried, when they'd felt the Fire but were unable to trust that it wouldn't burn their hearts to ashes. Two faces appeared in Fire and Water, poignantly young and solemn, foreheads circled by thin gold crowns like living flame.
"I saw this first when I was barely sixteen," Sioned murmured. "It's what I've seen all my life."
"You are my life," he replied simply.
She rested her head on his shoulder and allowed the vision to fade. "Were we ever that young?"
"I thought we'd already agreed that we're both elderly and decrepit." He held her closer, burying his lips in her hair.
"Oh, yes ... I'd forgotten."
"So," he said, "had I."
Chapter Two
A o the Sunrunners standing on the battlements of Goddess Keep, the ocean was as vast a wilderness as the Desert, and more threatening. They could at least retain their wits if forced to traverse the Long Sand; setting sail across Water meant incapacitating sickness which, though it wouldn't kill them, would surely make them wish they were dead. A faradhi on water was as helpless as a dragon without wings. Andry sometimes wondered how Lady Merisel had convinced her people to leave Dorval for the continent.
And why had they come here, of all places? he asked himself as Valeda chanted the day's end. Goddess Keep had several advantagesЧrich farmland that made it self-sufficient, comforting isolation, a defensible approach on one side and forbidding cliffs on the other, no mountains to block the sunlight, and a far southwesterly location that gave it a maximum-length day even in whiter. But rain and thick fog walled up the castle every year, rendering the light of sun and moons inaccessible. Was this the best Merisel could find? Or had there been some unknown but compelling reason to build here?
He chided himself for letting his attention stray from the ritual. He'd already missed half of it; Torien's deep voice, representing Earth, alternated now with his wife Jolan's ringing words as she personified Fire. The two aspects of the Goddess were thus invokedЧmale and female, Earth and Fire. Deniker then took over the male's part, speaking for that aspect of the Storm God that was Air. Ulwis assumed the voice of Water, sweetly melodic as a mountain stream as she recited the counterpoint to her husband's words. Andry let the chant wash over him. Not the best poetry, but adequate to the purpose. It got the idea across.
25
26 Melanie Rawn
All four voices invoked protection over the times between sunset and moonrise, moonset and sunrise, when there was no light for a faradhi to use. Andry found the cadences more powerful in the old language, with its terse nouns and spare verbs. But the majority offaradh'im knew little of it, so perforce the rituals were in modern speech. He often wondered why Merisel had forbidden the use of the continent's original language. And how had she managed to all but obliterate it, except for remote places in the northern princedoms, in a mere few hundred years? It was the language of sorcery, and that might have been the reason for her adamant eradication. Andry suspected, though, that she had decided to emphasize the establishment of a new order of things by establishing another tongue. But on this, as on many other things, her histories were frustratingly silent.
Only magical terms and personal names were still as they had been. Logical enough; the terms were evocative of power in and of themselves, and a Naming was a very solemn ceremonyЧalso magic. Many places retained their old names in sometimes corrupted forms. Veresch trans-. lated into "silent wolf"Чappropriate to those mountains. Dorval, home of the Sunrunners before their arrival on the continent, meant "loyal sword"; Catha was a particularly potent word combining Water and breath, or Air. But it was anybody's guess what Ossetia or Zaldivar or Ussh had originally been. Even some personal names were puzzling. Jolan, the scholar among his devr'im, often spent whole nights working on a single term. Intellectual puzzles appealed to her.
Andry translated the last lines back and forth from one language to the other, enjoying the unison of four differing voices.
Protect us from the dark time of night (Vis-tiel wis'im se'eltan la bellia) Until the Sun brings light and life. (Josclen dev edeva.)
He and his devr'im had no reason to feel helpless without sun or moons. But common Sunrunners were not taught to use the stars. Gathered down below in the courtyard, they found great meaning in this daily ritual conducted by their superiors.
- STRONGHOLD 27
He and Jolan had spent a whole winter and spring working out the specifics of the Elements. No one had ever codified belief before. This amazed AndryЧfor there was much satisfaction to be had from organized, definitive tenets. Surely Merisel had known that. But she had allowed no formalization of the attributes of the Goddess and the Father of Storms, and no rituals other than the ancient ones of Naming, Choosing, and Burning. Faith was a casual thing, casually observed. Andry suspected she had overreacted to the complex ceremonies of the diarmadh'im; this "Nameless One" he had heard sorcerers swear by had evidently demanded elaborate rites. Andry did not propose the same. What he was doing he likened to what Rohan had done at his first Rialla as ruling prince. Just as Rohan had used ancient maps and treaties to clarify borders and set every princedom's boundaries so everyone would know literally where he stood, Andry found clues in the histories and the Star Scroll to set the boundaries of belief.
The four voices rose ie unison for the final verse, praising the Goddess and the Storm God. Air and Water were obviously Elements of the latter, each capable of bringing both life and destructionЧbut not to each other. Fire, the most sacred, could scorch Earth to ashes. This was the source of tension and thus of power, for it was the Goddess' strength that kept her two aspects under control. Sunrunners were first and foremost servants of the Goddess, drawing their power from her.
All persons were made of all four Elements: the Air of breath, the Water of blood, the Earth of bones and flesh, and the Fire that was the life of the mind and heart. Their tensions were reflected in everyone. It was a tidy system, and appealed to Andry's sense of order.
For example, Sunrunner physicians now knew exactly where to direct their energies to effect a cure. A broken bone required no Water-rich potions, nor cauterizing Fire, nor inhalations of herbs on Air, but rather splints made of Earth-born wood. Likewise a poisoning of the blood's crimson Water could be helped only by certain plants that grew in rivers and lakes. It was entirely fitting and logical that dranath, the herb of the mind, should require baking in hot ovens or drying in the sun's Fire to reach its full effectiveness. These remedies had been known before, but now physicians knew the why of them.

28 Melanie Rawn
Andry was not responsible for the medicinal aspect of belief. For that he credited a young man who had come to Goddess Keep two years ago after training in Gilad. Evarin had been only nineteen, the most brilliant student ever known at the school for physicians. But he was also faradhi gifted, and knew it, and had left Gilad before receiving his certificate.
"I won't waste a weary year as a drudge for some idiot who couldn't soothe a skinned knee, and then pay over part of my earnings for three more years to support the school. Especially when I've known what I really am since the first time I set foot in a fishing boat! And besides that, my Lord, you need me."
Evarin offended many with what they saw as arrogance. Andry knew it was the supreme confidence of someone born to a specific work; after all, he was called arrogant, too. Valeda had had Evarin's man-making night, reporting with amusement that the boy's pride had suffered a serious hurt remedied just before dawn. This secretly increased Andry's liking for himЧhis own first night had not been a resounding success. He'd made up for it since. So had Evarin, if rumors were to be believed. He now wore eight rings, and it was for him and at his suggestion that the eighth was reserved hereafter for Master Physicians. Andry alone kept that ring without having to qualify for it; his devr'im, who wore nine, had mostly chosen to give it up. Deniker, Oclel, and Nialdan had no talent for healing; Man and Rusina couldn't be bothered. Ulwis attended Evarin's classes every so often, halfheartedly. Torien, as chief steward and senior devri, felt it incumbent upon himself to earn the Master Physician's ring. But Valeda showed a true gift for advanced medicine, and the eighth ring was back on her left thumb before Evarin had been at Goddess Keep a year.
Utterly self-confident, convinced that only Sunrunners should treat the sick and injured, Evarin might have become Andry's rival within and without Goddess Keep. A physician's power was formidable and Evarin was prodigiously gifted. But Andry was not only Lord here and grandson of a prince, but had possession of that which earned Evarin's instant respect: the Star Scroll. In it were encoded the spells and potions of the diarmadh'im, lost for hundreds of yearsЧ even to them. The sorcerer Mireva had sent one of her own to steal it if possible, and had failed. It was never read
STRONGHOLD 29
except in a closed, windowless, hearthless room, so that no conjuring by light could gain a glimpse of it. Urival had given Sioned a translated copy, which infuriated Andry even at this late date. But she was afraid of using powerЧlike her husband and like the man she called her son.
Knowledge of Pol's true birth was a power Andry had not yet decided how to use. He had come to believe that the Goddess would not have allowed him to know if there was no purpose for the information. He had not yet found one. He would not reveal it for childish spite; there was no point in that except his own satisfaction.
He had almost revealed it once, during an ugly confrontation at the Rialla of 731. Three years earlier, Andry had gone secretly into the Veresch to kill any diarmadh'im he could find. Gloves had hidden faradhi rings; he and Valeda and Nialdan had been careful to draw no attention to themselves, posing as simple travelers. The mountain folk knew only that certain people who had lived among them vanished without trace, the doors of their homes marked with a sunburst pattern burned into the wood. The mark of the Goddess, it came to be called. No one ever connected them with the executions.
But somehow Pol found out. He had waited through the first days of the Rialla, treating Andry with a cool, distant respect. Then, on the morning of the races, while Andry stood at a paddock fence admiring his father's horses, there came a flash of colors so blindingly intense that if not for the wooden rail at his chest, he would have collapsed.