"David Drake - Crown of the Isles 01 - The Fortress of Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

pestered by distant officials. That's the way things had been in Barca's
Hamlet, pretty much, simply because the community was a tiny backwater on an
island which had ceased to be important a thousand years before.
Most of those who said that now, however, were local nobles. What they meant
by freedom was that nobody from Valles should tell them how they should treat
their own peasants. A peasant given the opportunity generally prefers a bully
on a distant island to a bully in the castle overlooking his farm. Even
better: Garric's government didn't bully and it tried to protect its citizens.
Garric hadn't set out to conquer the other islands of the kingdom; rather, he
was visiting thtem one by one in a Royal Progress-accompanied by a fleet and
army that obviously could crush any would-be secessionist. As a result, the
reunification of the Isles was taking place in conference rooms, not on
battlefields.
Tenoctris clasped her hands and muttered in reaction to the pageant she alone
saw in the sky. If there were proof that the Gods rather than blind chance
ruled the world, it was in the fact that the same cataclysm that brought down
the Old Kingdom threw Tenoctris forward from that time to this one.
Wizards used the powers on which the cosmos balanced. These waxed and waned in
thousand-year cycles and were at a peak now. Because wizards remained for the
most part as blind, clumsy, and foolish as they'd been when they'd conjured
music and baubles from the air to amaze guests at a feast, disaster loomed
over the New Kingdom as surely as it had wrecked the Old.
Even in these days Tenoctris could affect very little through wizardry, but
she saw and understood the powers which greater wizards used in ignorance. Her
knowledge and the strong hand of Prince Garric of Haft had so far been enough
to reunify the kingdom; and the Isles to be unified if they were to face the
threats, human and demonic, which had swollen as the underlying powers
increased.
No one could look at the present world and doubt that Good and Evil existed.
Those who thought they could remain neutral in the struggle had chosen Evil,
even though they wouldn't admit it.
Sharina put her arm around Tenoctris for companionship. The old wizard had
lived seventy years or more, and something of the weight of the ten centuries
she'd been thrown forward seemed to lie on her shoulders also. Tenoctris
didn't believe in the Great Gods and all she'd ever wanted from life was peace
for her studies, but she was spending her life in the service of Good.
As were Garric and Sharina and their friends; as were all the members of the
royal army and the royal administration. Individually they included better
folk and worse, but all were on the right side in the greater struggle... or
so Sharina believed.
She smiled again, broadly this time. She did believe that.
Sharina turned to watch the barge nuzzle the Shepherd's high, curving stern
where Garric stood with Liane, a pair of aides, and a squad of black-armored
members of the Blood Eagles, the bodyguard regiment. Garric's silvered
breastplate made him look both regal and heroic-which was the purpose, of
course; nobody expected fighting here on First Atara.
Sharina noticed he hadn't donned the helmet with the flaring gilt wings that
completed the outfit, though he probably would before they landed. By the time
her brother was fifteen he was already the tallest man in Barca's Hamlet, and
the helmet added a full hand's-breadth to that height.