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

On the fifth day of his martyrdom, after Edrel had given him just that one order too many, Amiel complained to Pol. He was heard in a silence that he interpreted as encouragement to present the full list of his grievances. They were many. At length, when he was done, his lord looked down at him with those strange, changeable blue-green eyes and said something shocking. "Legally, you're bound to my service until I decide you're worthy of being knighted. But as you seem so unsuited to life here, I suppose I've no choice but to send you home."

Amiel gaped. Send him home? It was Edrel who was impossibleЧand Edrel who was unimportant. Momentarily deprived of the power of speech, he finally found voice enough to burst out, "But I'm a prince!"

"No," Pol replied. "You're a squire. And likely to remain one for several dozen years unless you alter your thinking. If, that is, anyone will take you after I release you from my service." "No, my lordЧplease!"

Pol regarded him thoughtfully. "Well, well. That's the first time I've heard you say that word. I'll wager it's the first time you've ever said it." Then he smiled. "If we're lucky, we all learn something new every day, Amiel."

Over the next eight years he learned how to say "please" and "thank you." He learned that what he was worth depended on what he was, not whose son he had been born. He learned to tolerate Edrel, then to like him, and finally to regard him as the brother he'd never had. At the Rialla of 737, Amiel knew that Edrel was in love with Princess Norian before Edrel did. This was only fair; that spring, Edrel had been the one to point out that the reason Amiel was losing sleep was bronze-haired, dark-eyed, and the niece of the Master of Hawks. When he married Nyr that autumn, it was in a double celebration with Edrel and Norian.

But after, while riding home to Medawari, Amiel knew

that childhood playmates also grown to adulthood would expect a man-sized version of the dictatorial little prig they'd pretended to like because one day he would be their ruling prince. The change in him would shock them witless.

So would his new wife. Nyr lacked any inheritance of money or land; she had no important family connections; she came from a holding so remote that nobody had ever heard of it; she was barely even highborn. She had come to Dragon's Rest to visit her uncle, and stayed because Princess Meiglan liked her. Amiel's former companions might have understood his taking her as his mistressЧ though she wasn't even that beautiful until one looked into her eyes or heard her laugh. But that he had actually married this nobody would have them gaping.

He thought this over on the first days of their journey back to Gilad, amused to find an impulse still in him to demand their deference toward his Chosen wife. It was the difference between thirteen winters and twenty-one that he thought of Nyr rather than himselfЧand that he decided to restrain his despotic urges and let them see her worth for themselves.

He had planned a leisurely ride home, escorted by ten of his father's soldiers. Cabar had gone ahead, disliking travel for travel's sake and wanting the comforts of his own castle. His had turned out the wiser choice. By mid-autumn, they were at war.

Amiel and Nyr's pleasure trip became a journey through nightmares. They hid by day in copses and forests, and sometimes in the scorched shell of a barn, riding only by night and beseeching the Father of Storms for cloud cover that would blot out the moons. A journey planned for thirty days had taken more than fifty. When at last they arrived home, Cabar wept while embracing the son he had given up for dead.

Medawari had been locked up tight since the first day of the war. Cabar could not be budged from his adherence to the point of treaty law extolled by Pirro of Fes-senden: that because attack had not come from another

princedom but from enemies totally unknown, each prince was absolved from going to the others' aid.

Amiel learned this almost the moment he rode into the courtyard. He waited a few days to make sure, asking questions and growing more and more infuriated when people told him only what they thought he wanted to hear. Then he confronted his fatherЧrather untactfully, as it happened, in the middle of dinner one evening.

"I know we haven't the resources to mount an effective army of our own," the young prince began, "but surely we could send what we have to reclaim what we've lost."

"All the troops we can muster are needed to protect us here. Their duty is to protect their princeЧand the heir," Cabar added sternly.

"I don't like the cost of safety," Amiel retorted.

"Then look at the cost of war! If Rohan wins, he will be bound by what he himself wrote. He can't punish us for holding to the treaty. If these savages win, we will have shown that we wish only to live in peace. But until somebody wins, our gates are closed and I will hear no more on the matter."

"FatherЧ"

"No more!"

It was Nyr who coaxed him from the high table, saying she felt faint and needed his support up the stairs. He very nearly told her to find a servant, then saw the urgency in her dark eyes and went with her. Grudgingly.

When they were alone in their chamber, she said, "Dearest, I know what you think and what you feel, but shouting at your father in the middle of dinnerЧ"

"I'll go myself!" he fumed. "I'll take whoever has the spine to go with me. If I have to, I'll order them out of their soft chairs and safe chambersЧ"

"Amiel! Listen to me! What about the physicians?"

That stopped him before he could work himself into a tirade. "What?"