"Jim Farris - Mage 2 - Raven of Yorindar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farris Jim)

I stepped into the shadow of the wall to the gate, the only gate in the entire wall, and rapped loudly with
my staff, three times. "Send out the condemned! Justice calls!"

After a few minutes, the gate slowly creaked open. Two guards stood behind it, eyeing me
apprehensively. Their chainmail armor gleamed in the shaft of sunlight the gate let through, and their livery
was that of the combined battalion of Arcadian and Larinian soldiers assigned to the duty of guarding the
Great Wall. Between them they held an old man dressed in a ragged tunic and threadbare breeches, his
white beard hanging long and unkempt. His arms were tied to a stick passed behind his back, and he was
barefoot. He was the first of the condemned, and the words I was about to say to him had been decided
by King Darian over twenty years ago. "Justice for you, Torin Dorgosson. Justice calls this day. It was
your lips that gave the order to slay the children of Thilo village. Now, after twenty-five years in prison,
justice finally calls. What have you to say for yourself?" I asked, my hood throwing my face in shadows.

"Nothing. I have no excuse," he replied, his voice cracking and thin from disuse. "Twenty-five years has
taught me that. Oh, they fed me and kept me healthy with many herbal teas. Even so, I was alone each
and every day of that time. My food and drink passed through a hatch beneath the door, I never saw a
living soul. My heart aches in loneliness, witch. All I ask is that the end be painless, as surely the fires of
hell will pain me enough for all the rest of eternity," he finished, his voice fading to a whisper as he hung
his head low.

"So be it. Come willingly, and your suffering shall be ended painlessly," I said, reaching out an
ebon-gloved hand to him. Of course, he had to be willing. The Spell of Returning wouldn't work on him
otherwise.

He flinched back a step, evading my grasp. "I am afraid," he said, his feeble, aged voice trembling.

"Go on, you mangy cur! Face your death like a man!" one of the guards swore, and pushed the prisoner
at me.

Torin staggered, and would have fallen had I not clapped a gloved hand to his withered shoulder to
steady him. I gave the guard a cold stare, and he couldn't meet my gaze. I could see he was frightened of
me, and was covering his fear with this small act of bravado. "Enough," I said coldly. I needed the
prisoner to be willing for my spell to work, and frightening him and shoving him around wasn't helping
matters. I realized that Darian's speech, though appropriate, wasn't going to allow me to take this old
man with me. I decided to take another tack.

Gently turning Torin around, I drew my knife from my side and parted the ropes that bound him, the
enchanted blade slitting the stout cords as though they were mere thread. The stick fell to the bare earth
with a dry clatter, and Torin rubbed his thin, bony wrists nervously. I gently turned him around again as I
sheathed the blade, and lifted his aged face with an ebon-gloved finger. He looked up into my face for
the first time, and his eyes widened. My eyes flashed like twin pieces of jet, and my ebon hair drawn
back into a ponytail accentuated my aquiline half-elven features, making me look beautiful and
dangerous. I'd estimated the age I'd first taken this body at was twenty-three - and at that age, it had
merely been the body of a mundane half-elf rogue of remarkable beauty, but no remarkable physical
prowess. Then, it had been beautiful and agile, but soft and weak. Now, at perhaps sixty-four or
sixty-five years of age, it was in the prime of its half-elven youth - hard, fast, deadly, and astoundingly
beautiful, with an alien cast to the features. And more, after forty-two years of living the ascetic life of a
Hyperborean battle-mage, forty-two years of life with nearly every drop of water and nearly every
morsel of food being conjured by sorcery, this body had been forged into something far greater than it
once was, or ever could have become otherwise.