"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 2 - Dragon Token" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

since that dawn. "I can help a little. But you must tell me where the pain is."

"Everywhere and nowhere. Give me what you judge best, child. And then let me speak." When Betheyn started to leave; Myrdal lifted her cane to block her path. "Stay."

Hollis nodded at Beth and the two women knelt opposite Chayla as she sifted herbs into a cup filled from the waterskin at her belt. They waited while Myrdal drank, coughed harshly, and eventually nodded.

"Thank you, child. That's much better. Now listen, all of you. These secrets came to me through my mother, whose mother bore her to Zehava's grandsire. My own daughter should have kept the knowledge after meЧbut Maeta is long dead." Black eyes still sharp as obsidian chips regarded each of them in turnЧChayla and To-bren, Hollis, Betheyn. "I give it now to descendants of Zehava, and one who bore children to his line, and one who would have done so."

Hollis suddenly knew what Myrdal was going to tell them: the secrets of every castle in the Desert, and some outside the Desert. Traps for enemies, like those at Re-mage v; passages, like the ones at Stronghold; perhaps other things no one had ever guessed at. Hollis disciplined her mind to techniques learned in her youth at Goddess Keep. What she heard, she would remember exactly, and for the rest of her days.

Her Sunrunner memory was the reason she had been summoned to hear this. As for Betheyn, who would have been Sorin's wifeЧshe was the daughter of an architect. She would understand the intricate machinery of such secrets. Chayla was of Zehava's blood; thus the knowledge would stay in the family. The inclusion of Tobren gave Hollis a qualm that instantly shamed her. But this was Andry's daughter who huddled beside her. Tobren would tell her father whatever he wished to know, whenever he asked it. Perhaps sharing the secrets was Myr-dal's way of trying to bring Andry back to them. Hollis hoped the old woman wasn't making a mistake.

Myrdal coughed again, one hand touching briefly at her chest, then began. "Pay attention. At Skybowl. . . ."

*

Chay squinted into the distance, trying to see the spires marking the entrance to the Court of the Storm God, where they should have hidden this night. But the Vel-lant'im had not followedЧhad, in fact, stood in stunned amazement as Stronghold went up in flames like a grease-soaked torch. Chay had decided that between his people, Walvis', and the ones led by Sethic of Grib, there were enough to stand guard while the rest of them stole a little sleep from this long winter night.

For himself, he was too tired to sleep, too tired to think or feel. He rose from the folds of a cloak laid out on the sand and left the encampment, not knowing where he walked and not caring.

Sentries nodded to him; he knew it rather than actually seeing it. He climbed a short hill, forcing himself to suppleness despite the rasp of air in his lungs and the ache in his thighs. Old fool, fighting half the day as if you were twenty againЧ

From the rise he could look down on the tiny fires that dotted the camp, bright islands in a black sea. But so few. He shivered at that thought. Sparse, scarce fires in the darknessЧit was the way Rohan would have seen them, he told himself dully. Rohan's influence that made him see the same way.

But Rohan would have seen hope in those flames. Chay could not.

I have seen the Fire take two of my sons, one of them before his eighth winter and the other in the prime of his manhood. Now the Fire has claimed my prince, my brother, my friend. No man should outlive his children. Neither should a man outlive his prince.

Kept tight in his breast until now by urgency and fear and exhaustion, the agony finally broke through. He stumbled, unable to see, flung out a hand to brace himself on a boulder the size of a dragon. The cold stone

bruised his knuckles, clawed back at his fingers as he tried to support himself. Sliding down, he bent his head to his drawn-up knees and wept like a child.

A long time later, when his eyes were empty, he heard footsteps below. Walvis climbed the hill and without a word sat beside him on the ground. Shoulder to shoulder they watched the stars, until the younger man finally spoke into the silence.

"Someone will have to tell Pol, when we find him tomorrow."

Chay nodded, knowing who would have to do it. He took the topaz ring from his pocket, staring at the bright stone surrounded by emeralds. Walvis made a small sound and turned his head away.

A dragon's cry shook the Desert stars. Chay shuddered, fresh tears stinging his eyes. He'd thought his heart dry as the sand, but the sound of a dragonЧ

"I've been waiting for it," Walvis murmured, his voice thick.

Dragoncry before dawn, death before dawn. Chay nodded blindly. "They mourn one of their own."

*

"Stay with her," Meath had been told. "Stay with her."

He kept watch that night as he had done nearly all their lives, one way or another. Since her first day at Goddess Keep, on the journey to the Desert to become a princess, at RiaU'im, and from Graypearl, he'd watched over her. He knew everything about her. He knew all her secrets. And he had helped her to keep them.