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

"The physicians," she repeated.

"What in the Name of the Goddess do they have to do with anything?"

"Isn't part of their oath to give of their skills whenever there is need?" "So?"

"There is need," she said simply.

When he got to where she already was, he gave a whoop of delight. "Whenever and wherever! They can't fulfill their oath, to help all the princedoms if they can't get there! So if I escort them with a force of troops, Father can't stop me!" Seizing his wife in his arms, he whirled her around the room and landed with her on the bed. "You're brilliant! Whatever made you think of it?"

She hesitated. "I wouldn't have, except that I consulted a physician myself. Yesterday."

Paling, he sat up and stared at her. "Nyr? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm all good, healthy peasant stock on my mother's side. We never have any trouble. You mustn't worry."

This made no sense to him, and he said so.

She smiled. "Oh, Amiel."

The moment he realized his prospective fatherhood changed him as much as his eight years at Dragon's Rest.

On the day after a dragon was killed at Stronghold, Amiel marched out of Medawari. His childhood companions had not yet had time to discover the differences between the boy he'd been and the man he was. When he gave an order, it was obeyed. When he commanded secrecy, they kept their mouths shut. If the "escort" Amiel provided for the sixty physicians who had volunteered their services wasЧat three hundred and twenty soldiersЧa trifle excessive, no one commented on it.

Excepting Cabar, when he found out. But few listened to him, and no one stopped Amiel from going. They knew who their next ruling prince would be.

*

"One more story, Papa? Please?" Pol might have resisted JihanЧwho would have demanded, not askedЧbut it had always been impossible

to tell Rislyn "no." Not when she looked up at him with those big green eyes from beneath a tangle of golden hair. His gentle little girl had said hardly a word since Stronghold. The terrible shocks of the last eight daysЧ being caught in Sioned's working, the death of her beloved Grandsir, and the flight from the burning castleЧ had affected her more deeply than Jihan. Or perhaps Jihan simply hid it better.

"One more," he agreed, and settled more comfortably at the foot of the bed, his back against the post and one bare foot tucked under him. He paused for a sip from the cup of taze in his hand as the girls snuggled into their pillows, and then he began.

"A very long time ago, before even a single stone was shaped to build the keep here at Skybowl, a dragon lived on the shores of the lake. He fished in the lake or hunted in the hills when he was hungry, and curled up in the warm sand when he was tired, andЧ"

"What color was he?" Jihan asked.

"That's what I'm about to tell you, if you'll hush and listen," he scolded with a smile, tweaking her toes beneath the coverlet. "He was all one color, just like every other dragon in the world back then. This is the story of how dragons came to be different colors. Have I your leave to continue, my ladies?"

"Yes, please," Rislyn said. "We've never heard this one before."

This was not surprising, as it had only formed in his mind a little while ago. And, of course, it wasn't about dragons at all.

"Well, this dragon lived here all by himself. He wasn't lonely, because dragons back then were very solitary creatures. They had their own caves, or lakes, or moun-taintops, or forests, and didn't much associate with each other unless it was a mating year.

"One day the dragon woke from an afternoon nap to see a flight of birds overhead. He called out, and one was polite enough to slide down the breeze and talk with him.

" 'Where are you going?' the dragon asked the bird,