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

"Serves you right," Andry said "Tell me what you had to do to look exactly like Valeda."
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pursed her lips, frowning, then shrugged. "Making - at random, the way I did the other dayЧthat was . I didn't have a specific picture in my head of what I wanted to look like. And, of course, there was no dranath. "-:< morning it was difficult in another way. I had a model base the changes on, and I had the dranath, butЧ" She flopped, frustrated. "I don't really change, you see. I project an illusion. When I wear the guise of the Goddess on a
Хan-making night, I conjure a haze to obscure my identity. Cbtoring, voice, sizeЧI don't assume some other shape, I jest hide my own. When I was making random changes, it was just four or five thingsЧthe color of my hairЧ"
Х Blonde," Oclel interrupted in a casual drawl. "I rather liked it."
Andry was grateful for the teasing that lightened the atmosphere and took some of the tension from Rusina's face.
ХOh?" she asked. "And what did you think of my hands?"
Oclel shuddered. "If I wanted to be clawed by a dragon, I'd go live in the Desert." To Andry he said, "Fingernails like talons!"
"Was it difficult to sustain?"
"Yes. I didn't have any specific image in mind. Just vague
*ings, like the hair. But when I became Valeda, it was both easier and more difficult." She paused, searching for words. "It's a set pattern, you see. Like our own colors. We know tbem and they don't change. I know what Valeda looks like and it was simply a matter of repatterning myselfЧmaking a conjured illusion much the same way as we conjure in Fire." Rusina hesitated again. "It felt odd. It wasЧuncomfortable. She didn't fit. I can't think how to explain it. Beneath it, I was still me. But it was likeЧlike I was trying to wear someone else's skin."
Evarin leaned forward and said, "I have an idea about feat. Subtle changes superimposed on our own bodies are ooe thing. Creating an illusion to fit around ourselves is quite another."
"I see," Andry said, although he didn't, quite. "Will this "Х>e a problem?"
ХNot once we get used to it. I think." He gave a rueful
Хille. "Rusina was Valeda for only a short while. She didn't nave time to learn how to move comfortably inside the illusion."
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"Do you think you could get used to it?" Andry asked her.
"How'd you like to be wearing someone else's clothes?" She thought for a moment, then added, "Underwater."
Andry tried to imagine it, could not, and said so. Evarin shrugged.
"It's only a curiosity, after all, my Lord," the physician said. "It's like that mirror you found in Princemarch years ago. No real use for it. But we all wanted to figure out how the sorcerers do it, and now we know."
"No, it's not like the mirror," Torien said suddenly. "The mirror simply is. This could be mischief if the wrong people learn it."
"Well, they won't," Evarin stated. "Besides, it takes dranath to accomplish it, and that's strictly controlled."
"But not by us," Oclel reminded him. "Prince Pol owns its source. We take what we can in secret, but he harvests most of it against the day when there might be another Plague. How well does he guard it, Andry?"
"VeryЧif only to keep me from getting my hands on it." Andry leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. "My cousin is as possessive of his power as I am of mine. We are worthy adversaries."
"I don't see why you have to be," Rusina said. "He has his area of influence, and you have yours."
"You truly don't understand?" Oclel stared at his wife in amazement. "Don't you see that those areas overlapЧto our detriment? He's a Sunrunner, not just a prince."
"He should have been truly one of us," Torien mused. "But his parents had other ideasЧprompted by his all-too-talented mother, who taught him everything she knows."
"Don't forget the lessons Urival gave him in his so-called 'retirement,' " Oclel said. "And Morwenna. They went to Stronghold to train him in things Sioned didn't know."
"Which wasn't much." Andry gave an annoyed shrug. "What's done is done, and cannot be undone. I won't waste time or energy on it at this late date."
"But can't you make him see that he shouldn't be at odds with you?" Rusina clung to her absurd objections. "If you worked togetherЧ"
Andry laughed harshly. "We're both far too old to change now. He'd never submit to my rule, and I would betray the Goddess and everything we faradh'im are if I bowed to
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him." Pol would find out soon enough how much he needed Andry. When the ships came and the battles began, he would call out for help. Andry knew he would give whatever help he couldЧconsiderable help, with his devr'im. But Po! would pay for that help. Dearly.
"It's a pity things can't be different," Rusina said.
"It's really no different from the days when Andrade contended against Roelstra. Perhaps it's meant to be that way." Andry got to his feet. "As it happens, I agree with Torien. There's potential danger if the wrong people learn this. Write nothing down, and discuss it nowhere but in a room as secure as this one. I ne'edn't add that only the devr'im and Evarin should know this exists at all. I want all of you to consider for a few days, and then we'll meet here and talk in more depth. For now, however, we've heard enough to keep us busy." He pointed a stern finger at them and added, "But if you ever, and I do mean ever, give me such a fright again, drowning will be too good for you."
They wore properly guilty expressionsЧRusina's still tinged with smugnessЧas they filed out. Andry grinned, shook his head, and decided that the very thing to get the taste of words about Po! out of his mouth was a morning spent with his children. He whistled as he made his way to the nursery, and earned an exasperated scowl from Valeda when he disrupted routine, declared a holiday, and took the four of themЧeven little MeriselЧoutside to play dragons.
Chapter Three
/Tkfter all the years it had taken Walvis to transform a broken-down castle into one of the most prosperous in the Desert, he might have been expected to sit back and enjoy life. By any standard, he was a successful, powerful man. He adored his wife. His son and daughter had married well, and given him five grandchildren. Former squire to the High Prince, he was honored with Rohan's friendship; victor of the Battle of Tiglath and the canny ruler of a difficult holding, he had earned the respect of his peers. After more than thirty years of concentrated toil, Remagev now produced the finest glass ingots in the Desert, and in the last few years Walvis had gotten rich on, of all things, cactus seeds coveted for their incomparable aroma in taze. No one had to lift a finger to grow pemric plants; harvest was simply a matter of getting a good hold on the cactusЧavoiding the dagger-long needlesЧand shaking.
But for all his sleek prosperity at the age "of fifty-two, he did not equip a cool room in his keep with a cozy chair and a few good books. Instead, every autumn he conducted a minor war.
Walvis sat his stallion as easily as he had at nineteen, watching a spectacle not unlike the one over which he had presided at Tiglath at that young age. The two armies were much smaller, of course, and both were under his command this time, and there were no chin-scarred Merida to be killed. But the battle cries and the flash of swords and the thunder of hooves were all the same. The young menЧand even a few highborn young womenЧwho came to him hoping to learn pretty tricks of riding and swordplay were always in for a shock. End-of-training exercises were no
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genteel final examinations of horsemanship and of skill with blades and bow.
Despite emphasis on military matters, a year spent at Remagev was not for the purpose of creating warriors eager to prove their prowess by doing battle with neighbors at home. Chay had established the school with the idea of educating all that out of them. It was his belief, eventually supported with reluctance by Rohan, that if everyone had everyone else's measure as a soldier, there could be no wars to test skills and wits. Naturally, not all the youths were of equal accomplishmentЧbut they all knew the basics of battle and tactics, and how to work with their own limitations. They might discover each other's weaknesses, but they also knew each other's strengths.
This was the cynical, practical reason Chay had originally given. Rohan would have preferred that the use of sword and bow be confined to the hunt, but had agreed to Chay's plan after realizing something else. Comradeship and mutual respect were the major results of a year spent in such training. Even sons and daughters of hereditary enemies teamed to work together at Remagev. The companionship of training field and barrack went a long way toward negating traditional rivalries. Waivis had seen it happen a dozen times, most notably between two young men from Syr.
Their families had sparred since time's beginning over precisely five and one-half square measures of pastureland. Kostas, weary of seeing them in his law court, took his brother Tilal's advice and sent a son from each holding to Walvis. Bloody noses and black eyes were shared pretty equally between them during the first season of their residence. Walvis then used the oldest trick in anyone's book and sent them off on a six-day survival trek through the Desert. They returned exhausted, filthy, and with still more bruises, but also with the beginnings of respect for each other. By the end of their year at Remagev, they fought on the same side in the mock war and returned home friends. One of them had even married the other's sister.
Walvis grinned beneath his beard to remember the ironic end of their story. No longer fighting each other, the fami-hes united to turn on a neighbor who had long been a
uree of irritation to both. A thoroughly exasperated Kostas Хad gritted his teeth, descended on them with fifty of his
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household guard, and told them to behave or be gone from his princedom. On the ride back to High Kirat, he'd laughed himself out of breath.