"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 1 - Stronghold" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)
He saw nothing but the angry swirl of Pol's colors imprisoning his senses. He tasted acid emerald edged in black, felt the slice of diamond brightness, smelled stinging topaz-gold smoke. Pol's power staggered him.
Oh, yes, I know all about it. I know how you came into my lands in defiance of the edict against you and murdered my people. "In the Name of the Goddess," you'd say, wouldn't you? Justified because they were sorcerers, and therefore evil. Why didn't you go after Riyan? Or Ruala? Why don't you kill Princess NaydraЧshe's the last living daughter of High
I
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Princess Lallante. Or is it only the obscure and nameless you have the courage to kill?
They merited killing, he managed, and Pol's grip on him increased until he felt his head would split like a ripe apple in a clenched fist.
That was for me to decide. Not you. I am the law in Princemarch. Not you.
He had almost revealed it then. Almost flung the damning words at Pol: I know about you, I know whose son you really are. But he had not.
/ won't warn you again, cousin. If any more die, if any more of those ludicrous sun patterns are found, I will come after you.
There was a cruel, deliberate wrench at his senses, and then his mind was his own again. He discovered that his fingers had clawed so deeply into the wood that splinters were embedded in his palms and under his nails. When sight returned to his aching eyes, he turned his head, seeking Pol. Standing far away across the paddocks and the track was the tall figure, blond hair glowing in the sunlight. Pol was looking straight at him and even at a distance Andry saw rage in every line of him.
He should have told Pol then, should have shattered that insufferable insolence. But he had not. It was not yet time. It would have served no purpose but to vent his own anger, soothe his own pride.
It suited him that Pol ruled Princemarch and would be the next High Prince. Better him than Rinhoel of Meadowlord or Daniv of Syr, who were also grandsons of Roelstra. But the right moment had not yet come to reveal what he knew. Whether he would tell only Pol in private or proclaim it to all the princedoms, he did not know. But someday. . . .
The ceremony ended with the day itself. Andry leaned one shoulder against the crenellated wall as the faradh'im left the battlements. Torien approached, murmuring something about meeting to plan the harvest, but Andry shook his head and smiled.
"No, not tonight, my friend. Jolan wouldn't thank me for depriving her of your company this evening, if her eyes are any indication." He laughed as Torien looked flustered, and slapped his friend's back. Deniker and Ulwis came to Andry soon after to ask if he would join them for a little music
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later on. He politely declined this offer as well. Not that he would spend the night alone. He would share it with Brenlis.
Of the five women who had given him children, Brenlis was the only one who held more than a small piece of his heart. The daughter she had borne him of her first night was three this year, and bid fair to becoming the enchantress her mother was. From the moment Brenlis had come to Goddess Keep, everything about her had captivated him. Her beauty was unusual and compellingЧgolden-brown Jiair framed eyes that changed from gray to turquoise depending on her mood, and her face was as delicately perfect as her body. But more fascinating was her strangeness. He had never met anyone quite like her. Even the memory of Alasen faded when he was with Brenlis.
She was the daughter of a Syrene farmer, born within sight of the sea. She had been fostered for a short time at Stronghold, where Sioned had detected her gifts. Andry still remembered the morning Brenlis had arrived, appearing before him like a conjured vision, sunlight making her long braids twin rivers of shadowed gold. She had given the stunned Andry a letter from SionedЧthe two of them never communicated through faradhi means anymoreЧand waited for his verdict.
/ ask that you take her in and teach her Sunrunner ways, my Lord, Sioned had written in a formal style that betokened their estrangement, going on to detail the signs that meant possession of great gifts. But then she had added a personal note; he could hear her voice in the words, wistful with memory. When I look at her, I see myself as I was when even younger than sheЧcalled "fey" and looked on askance by my brother's wife, who did not wish so strange a girl in her household. But in Brenlis there is something else, something deeper. I have taught her only how to call FireЧI am not qualified to nurture such gifts as she possesses. They are not easily explained, but within a few days of meeting her you will see.
He had seen the instant those blue eyes met his own. She had been only fifteen. A year later Merisel was born. But if Andry had expected his feelings for Brenlis to settle into the same comfortable friendship he had with Valeda and Rusina and Ulwis, who had also borne his children, he was mistaken. The girl bewitched him. He had not felt this even with Alasen in his youth.
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Andry sometimes feared he made himself foolish with this passion for a girl half his age. But none questioned or gossipedЧnot only due to respect for him, though he commanded vast reverence, but because the gifts Brenlis evidenced were so awesome. Her talents as a conventional Sunrunner were negligibleЧshe had earned but two rings in the four years of her training, where most wore a fourth and often a fifth. She could call Fire and Air, and go Sunrunning with difficulty, and that was all.
But she needed no flame to see what would be. She warned of oncoming storms before the most careful Sunrunner observations could discern them. She saw Milosh of Fessenden's wife die days in advance of that lady's fatal accident. She knew when Sionell of Tiglath would be brought to bed of a child, and that it would be a son Named Meig. She knew things, as if the Goddess and Father of Storms, having decided an event, shared knowledge of it with her.
During her first year here, people had come to her with all manner of questions about their futures. The farmers who served Goddess Keep had consulted her about the best days for planting and harvest. To such questions she could reply only with a helpless shrug.
Andry had forbidden people to bother her with questions she could not answer. Some grumbled that what use was such seeing, but the rest knew that Brenlis' gift was something out of the ordinary, understanding that the small doings of everyday life were not the stuff of which the Goddess' visions were made. Was there not a circle of mighty trees in the forest for such questionsЧwho would one marry, how many children, what would old age be like? Visions were reserved for great matters and great warnings.
The sky darkened as the first stars appeared. Andry had no fear of being powerless under a night sky all dazzled with distant light; he had learned from the Star Scroll how to use that brilliance, so different from sun and moons. The
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diarmadh'im might consider the stars to be a Fire different from that of the Goddess, coming instead under the power of their Nameless One. Andry knew that Fire was Fire, but just the same there was something different about the stars. More subtle than other light, they burned not with the white-hot intensity of noon sun or the cool silvery glow of the moons, but with a fierce, icy brightness. All his dreams of war and terror and destruction had come when stars alone ruled the night.
He had not had such a dream in several years. Someone less wise would have believed that the danger was no longer imminent, and having done everything possible to prepare against disaster, could now relax the vigil. Andry did not fool himself. War was coming as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow. And it would come in autumn, when hatchling dragons darkened the sky.
He had seen them in the last dream. While funeral ships were sent out to sea, there to burn with their sails like great flaming dragon wings, the dragons themselves flew over Radzyn, shrieking. The invaders, gold beads glinting in their long beards, fell on their faces in the sand. All groveled but oneЧa tall, dark, regal man, a prince among these savages, who grabbed up a bow and shot a defiant arrow at the hatchlings. One was wounded, and screamed as she fell from the sky. Andry woke thinking, Rohan will be furious that someone killed one of his dragons.
No dreams had come to him since, but the ones he'd already had were burned into his brain. Each expanded on the firstЧRadzyn and its port town sacked, ruined, ablaze. Next had come sight of the looting, then the loading of dead warriors and living captives onto ships to be burned at sea, and finally the hatchling dragons. Autumn, unmistakably autumn, in a Dragon Year of mating when the young tried out the strength of new wings.
"My Lord? The evening is soft, but you look like thunder."
Andry turned and the heavy dread left him at beholding Brenlis. She was dressed in white silk, her hair lighter than usual after a long summer of sun, her skin glowing like moonlight on thick cream. Her lashes and brows and the rich wine-colored curve of her lips defined her face; otherwise she was all pale shadows as she drifted toward him across the stones. Sometimes, when the dusk touched her the way it did now or a single candle lit her face, and she
34 Meianie Sawn
tilted her head in a certain manner, he could almost believe she was Alasen. But it was not the poignant pain of recognizing another in her that stopped his breath; it was her beauty, hers alone, as if Alasen had been a mere foreshadowing of this woman.
He smiled and held out his hands. "No thunder. Although in that gown you make my blood roar so I can hardly hear. Do you think it's quite fair of you, my lady, to grow more lovely every instant?"
She shrugged, embarrassed. She didn't like compliments, no matter how sincere. He gave them anyway. He couldn't help himself. She was so exquisiteЧand so elusive. Words about her beauty made her seem more . . . here. If only she would blush, giggle, arch a brow, tease, or any of the other things women did when complimented Чbut then, if she did those things, she would not be Brenlis.
And despite the elusive quality of her mind and heart, she always came to him. Sometimes he wondered if this was because she wished to, or because she understood that his position would never allow him to be the one to come to her. Was it her own desire or her care of his pride that brought her?
Such thoughts left him as he turned her face to the stars with a gentle finger under her chin, intending to kiss her. But there was that in her eyes he knew meant seeing. "What is it, dear heart?"
"IЧI'm not sure," she said, frowning. "It was very quick. I saw myself standing on the cliffs at my parents' farm."
It was a six-day journey to her home in coastal Syr. That was a long time in comparison to her other visions. But this concerned him less than the other aspect of her sight. No simple, everyday occurrences, but major events Чor things that would become so in time. He had tried to puzzle out why she had seen the birth of Sionell's son; there had been no visions when the children of other athr'im were born. He could only wonder what role the boy would play when he was grown. The death of Milosh's wife had shown its significance quickly: grief-stricken, he stayed at his estates long enough to see her ashes blow away on the wind, then rode off into the hills. Pirro of Fessenden pleaded with Andry through his court Sunrunner to find his brother before he did himself some injury in his mad flight. Andry obligedЧ and worked devri spells at a great distance when it was seen
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that Milosh was in the hands of a sorcerer with a grudge against Pirro. Milosh had escaped with his life and a loathing of diarmadh'im that rivaled Chiana'sЧshe who had also been used by a sorcerer. Andry had been able to rid the continent of one more enemyЧand not in Princemarch, where Pol could make self-righteous objections. The death of Milosh's wife had been the catalyst.
Now, however, he could not fathom why Brenlis should have seen herself on the shores near her home. "Perhaps it was only a wish, a memory," he suggested.
"That's possible," she said, and seemed relieved.
But he couldn't make himself believe it. "Brenlis, if you want to go home and see your family. ..."
She smiled and shook her head. "I miss them sometimes, especially my little brother. But my home is here, at Goddess Keep."
He waited for her to add, With you. He was a fool to expect it, but couldn't help hoping. "Come inside. It's getting chilly."
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