"Dave Duncan - Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

had been breathtaking--its immense vertical extent from airless, waterless
rocky
uplands, faint and remote, down through pastures and then all the crop
levels,
barley and wheat and the others, to the lowest habitable, rice; and below
that
the useless jungle, and then the barren foothills clothed in the dense and
poisonous "red air" of the desert and the crucible plains.
The congregation rose again.
The royal fanfare was played.
The entourage entered: guards and priests and court functionaries.
The king and queen followed.
It had been a long time since Sald had been close to the king, but he
could
see little change. The famous flaxen hair might be turning to silver in
parts,
but when the king stepped into the carpet of sunlight around the thrones, his
hair blazed as brightly as the gold circlet it bore. The fair-skinned face
was
the same, the darting, penetrating eyes. Diamond decorations sparkled on his
royal-blue court dress. No quarterings there; the front of his coat bore the
eagle symbol only. Aurolron XX, King of Rantorra, tiny and immensely regal.
But Queen Mayala! Sald was stunned. Where now was the legendary beauty
which
had once been the toast of the kingdom? Like a woodland sprite, Mayala had
floated on the edges of his childhood, a fairy-tale queen with trailing honey
hair and a smile for which men would cheerfully have died. She floated no
more;
eyes downcast, hunched, shrunken inside her royal-blue gown, no taller than
the
king himself, servile even, she shuffled along beside him. Her hair looked
dyed,
her face waxen. If this was the best they could do with her for an
Investiture,
how did she look in private? He had heard no rumors.
Side by side, the royal couple advanced toward the thrones. Immediately
behind the king walked King Shadow, wearing identical clothes--minus
decorations, plus a black baldric--a portly yet a somber man.
Then came Crown Prince Vindax.
He had not changed--the jet hair, the beak nose, the easy athlete's walk
were just as Sald remembered. His eyebrows had grown perhaps even bushier. No
quarterings for him, either--he wore sky-blue and the talon symbol of the
heir
apparent. Prince Shadow was dead, so Vindax's brother, Jarkadon, walked
directly
behind him, filling the post until Count Moarien's appointment became
official.
The king and queen settled on the thrones, and Vindax took his place at his
father's side, Jarkadon still at his back. The senior officials moved
smoothly