"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.Empty.Crown.Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

Melior began to speak. He spoke as clearly and as fluently as if he
were reciting an old and familiar story. The others became as still
and silent as an audience spellbound by a play, and soon, listening,
Ruth lost all sense of anything beyond the tale he told.

The Elf-Lord's Tale

"MY NAME IS Rohannan Melior of the House of the Silver Silences, and
that House is one of the seven Great Houses of the Twilight which rule
a land so far from this land that the World of Iron in which you dwell
is barely a myth for our scholars. As we rule over the Men of our
land, so does a High King rule over us, and that he shall have died is
the cause of tragedy both in my world and your own.

"Yet it is not the death of the one who is known now in death as
Rainouart the Beautiful, High King of Chandrakar, which is the tragedy,
though the Sons of the Morning and the Daughters of the Evening Star do
not die in the time and season of Men. The tragedy came once the
funeral games were ended, and Rainouart's funeral boat was set upon the
bosom of the wave, and it was time to say who from among the Seven
Houses would be High King thereafter, for Rainouart had ruled long and
left no son or daughter behind him, and of the Lords Temporal, our
Barons, there was none among them whose puissance and courtois was
greater than his fellows'."

("I saw the miniseries," Philip said under his breath. Ruth put her
foot on top of his and pressed.) "At first it seemed that all might be
settled with reasoned councilthat it was not, you may know when I tell
you the High Ywing died when my mother was but a child, and from that
time until I grew to manhood his successor was not chosen.

"The way of it was this: "There was a lady among the Houses whose name
was Hermonicet, who was the most beautiful lady born to the Houses of
the Twilight in the memory of the Morning Lords or the reckoning of
bards. To the sorrow of all and the envy of some, her father had
betrothed her when only a child to the Lord of the Western Marches, who
lived in wild solitude at the very edge of the sea.

"That her father was wise and kind the barons only knew later. Then,
they knew that the Marchlord her husband had lately died, and so the
Lady Hermonicet was free to remarry how she would.

"Many hopes were pinned upon her choice-for I have seen her, and I tell
you truly she is all they said she was; as beautiful as the stars, and
as cold. And when it seemed that the Barons-among them my fathermight
come to agreement on who now would rule them, the Lady spoke from her
sea-tower and said she would take no one to spouse save he who would
now be High King, and open the gates of her tower never, save to that
one lord.