"Fancher, Jane - Rings 2 - Ring Of Intrigue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fancher Jane S)

of stone, organic shapes that bore no resemblance to any
rooms she'd ever known, sounds that echoed endlessly . . . a
person could be lost very quickly in this maze with no hope
of logicking herself free.
"Well, we've a respite, at least," Mikhyel's velvet voice
said at her shoulder. The gatekeeper had left. "When the
storm has passed, he'll send a messenger to the Tower.
They'll have someone come down to identify us."
"What about the box in the carriage? The papers Anheliaa
sent? Deymorin's seal"
Mikhyel's black brows knit.
"I . . . very much fear it won't be there."
"You think someone will steal it?"
"No. I" He seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to
meet her eyes. "Rings, I can't believe I'm such a fool. I
had it. And then, the lightning, the jostling . . . I lost it
somewhere, Kiyrstin." He waved a hand toward the stony
ceiling. "Somewhere up there."
That hand was shaking. He was. Cold. Shock. Reaction
to the lightning and the storm. Perhaps just the chill of the
rain that had caught them at the last. And possibly a re-
lapse of the debilitating weakness that had plagued him off
and on since the incident at the Boreton turnout.
"Anything in the box that could be dangerous in the
wrong hands?" she asked.
"Not really. None of those papers Anheliaa sent are
much good if you can't match our signatures."
"And the seal?"
"Old. Outdated by about a hundred years. It might turn
the right person a handsome profit on the black market,
but nothing else." He rubbed a hand across his eyes, and
swept stray hair back from his face. "We deliberately
avoided including anything compromising. Only such items
as might, along with the papers, support our claims to
someone like"
He tipped his head in the general direction of the
gatekeeper.
"Then I suggest you sit down and relax. Looking a bit
pale around the gills, laddybuck."
Mikhyel smiled wryly. "That's news?"
"I wish it were. Sit, Khyel. Before you fall."
She led him to a spot among the hay bales and pushed
him down, wrapping his cloak around him, fussing about
him, until he laughed and grabbed her wrist and pulled her
down beside him.
It was hard to remember, sometimes, that Mikhyel only
appeared fragile, with that bruised look about his eyes and
with features that were so different from his older brother's.
There was a steel core to Mikhyel dunMheric; a core tem-
pered in a childhood as Mheric Rhomandi's second son,