"02 - The Wyvern's Spur - Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak [4.0]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finder's Stone)

Wyvern's SpurWyvern's Spur
By Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb
1
Homecoming
From the journal of Giogioni Wvvernspur:
The 19th of Ches, in the Year of the Shadows
Late last night I returned home from my duties as royal envoy, to find my kin in
a greater uproar than the southern city I had left behind. Ten months of
Westgate's problems shrivel to insignificance when compared to the tragedy that
has befallen the clan of the Wyvernspurs of Immersea.
How could the flattening of an entire neighborhood by a dragon corpse, followed
by an earthquake and an underworld power-struggle, hope to compete with the
theft of a family heirloom no larger than a zucchini and uglier than
three-week-old sausage?
"A hunk of junk" is what Uncle Drone has always called the wyvern's spur (said
heirloom), and, considering all the trouble it has been, lam inclined to agree
with him. No doubt the family would have donated it to a church rummage
generations ago if not for the detestable prophesy that came with it.
According to family legend, the wyvern who presented it to old Paton Wyvernspur,
way back when, promised that the family line would never die out as long as we
held on to the gruesome chunk of mummified beastie. Logically it doesn't follow
that losing the dratted thing guarantees our demise, but we've always been a
superstitious lot, we Wyvernspurs, so there is a family conclave tonight in Aunt
Dorath's lair at Redstone Castle. Although I have not yet unpacked from my
journeys on behalf of the crown, I am expected to attend.
Someone will need to comfort Aunt Dorath. An oldest nephew's lot is never easy.
Giogi laid his quill pen on the writing table and left the journal open for the
ink to dry. He didn't feel it necessary to add that his great-aunt would find
his presence comforting only insofar as it would give her something else to
criticize. He planned to leave his journal to posterity someday, and there were
some things posterity just didn't need to know.
As far as Aunt Dorath was concerned, Giogi had dishonored the Wyvernspur family
last year with his disgracefulЧbut, as Giogi would put it, dead-onЧimitation of
King Azoun IV, which had resulted in Giogi's near assassination by the cursed
sell-sword Alias of Westgate and the disruption of an entire wedding reception.
Nor had Dorath, the matriarch of clan Wyvernspur, been impressed by her nephew's
tale of his subsequent hair-raising encounter with a red dragon named Mist. To
her mind, any young man who could not avoid entanglements with assassins and
monsters needed to be sent far away for an extended period. Aunt Dorath had
assumed that His Majesty Azoun had exiled Giogi in disgrace for those
transgressions.
What Dorath, and most of the general population, had not known, was that King
Azoun actually had assigned Giogi a secret mission, to discover the whereabouts
of Alias of Westgate, the king's potential assassin.
Not that I needed to be assigned, Giogi thought. I seem destined to run into the
womanЧor her relativesЧwherever I roam. Yet, after Giogi had spotted her near
Westgate that summer, she seemed to have vanished from the Realms entirely.
Giogi rose from his writing desk and stretched. His fingertips brushed against
one of the overhead chandeliers. He was a very tall young man, a legacy from
both his father and his mother. Last year he'd been slender and clean-cut, but