"04 - Emperor and Clown 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

now among the ladies of the palace; persons she could address by name, share tea
and chat with, whiling away a gentle hour or two. She had asked for many, with
no result.
Especially she had asked for Mistress Zana. Kadolan had a hunch that Zana's was
the most sympathetic ear she was likely to find, but even Zana had failed to
return her messages.
Something was horribly wrong. By rights, the palace should be rejoicing. Not
only was there a royal wedding and a new Sultana Inosolan to celebrate, but also
the death of Rasha. Arakkaran was free of the sorceress who had effectively
ruled it for more than a year. That should be a cause for merriment, but instead
a miasma of fear filled the air, seeping from marble and tile to cloud the sun's
fierce glare.
It must be all imagination, Kadolan told herself repeatedly as she paced, but an
insistent inner voice whispered that she had never been prone to such morbid
fancies before. Although no one outside Krasnegar would have known it, and few
there, she was almost seventy years old. After so long a life, she should be
able to trust her instincts, and her instincts were shouting that something was
very, very wrong.
She had left Inosolan at the door of the royal quarters. Two nights and two days
had passed since then. The days had been hard, filled with bitter loneliness and
worry. The nights had been worse, haunted by dreams of Rasha's terrible end.
Foolish, foolish woman! Again and again Kadolan had wakened from nightmares of
that awful burning skeleton, that fearful, tragic corpse raising its arms to the
heavens in a final rending cry of, LOVEI-only to vanish in a final roar of
flame.
Four words of power made a sorcerer. Five destroyed.
Master Rap had whispered a word in Rasha's ear, and she had been consumed.
The balcony was high. Over roofs and cloisters Kadolan had a distant view of one
of the great courtyards, where brown-clad guards had passed to and fro all day,
escorting princes in green or, rarely, groups of black-draped women. Horsemen
paraded sometimes. They were too far off for her to make out details, and yet
something about the way they all moved had convinced her that they were as
troubled as she. She had erred.
So had Inosolan.
A God had warned Inosolan to trust in love, and she had taken that to mean that
she must trust in Azak's love, that in time she would learn to return the love
of that giant barbarian she had married.
And then, too late ...
He was only a stableboy. Kadolan had never even met him until that last night in
Krasnegar. She had not exchanged a word with him directly. She did not know him.
No one did-he was only a stableboy! Not handsome or charming or educated or
cultured, just a commonplace laborer in the palace stables. But he had saved
Inosolan from the devious Andor, and when the sorceress had abducted Inosolan,
he had shouted, "I am coming!"
How could they have known? Crossing the whole of Pandemia in half a year,
fighting his way in through the massed guards of the family men, removing the
sorceress by telling her one of his two words of powereven if he had not planned
the terrible results.
The God had not meant Azak. The God had meant the stableboy, the childhood
friend.