"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 1 - Black Sun Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

nearby that would give her more privacy. Not until she was well inside it, with
the heavy alteroak door firmly shut behind her, did she remove the folded sheet
from its vellum envelope and read the words her husband had written.
Please come to me, it said, at your earliest convenience. The workshop
below. There was little more than that - his family crest imprinted above, the
swirl of his initials below - but she knew as she read it that there was a volume
of meaning between the lines . . . and that she lacked the resources to read
what they said, and thus must descend to him uninformed.
She glanced into the huge glass mirror that dominated the low-ceilinged
room, and briefly wondered if she should change her clothes before joining him.
Her gown, true to Revivalist style, had dragged in the dust all day; its warm
cream color was nearly rust about the hem, stained dark by the red clay of the
region. But elsewhere it was clean, its soft woolen nap protected by the heavy
surcoat she had worn. She pulled the few pins out of her hair, and let red-gold
curls pour down about her shoulder and back. He loved her hair, and this style of
gown; he loved her, she told herself, and would never let her come to harm. She
settled for fluffing the curls to more volume and using a dampened cloth to wipe
the dust from her eyes and off her face. That would be enough. That had to be
enough, if he wanted her to come to him quickly.
Filled with more than a little misgiving, she descended the winding staircase
that led down to the belowground rooms.
The library was empty, and lit only by a single candle. Kindled long ago, she
thought, noting its length; he must have been down here most of the day. Its
four walls were lined with books, a history of man from the time of First Sacrifice
to the current day - scribbled in tight, fearful letters, by the settlers of the
Landing, printed in the heavy ink of ErnaтАЩs first mass-production presses, or
painstakingly copied from holy scriptures, with letter forms and illuminatory
styles that harkened back to nearly-forgotten ages back on the mother planet.
She recognized the leather bindings of his own twelve-volume treatise on the
arts of war, and less formal notebooks, on mastering magic. Only . . .
DonтАЩt call it magic, he would have said to her. It isnтАЩt that. The foe is as
natural to this world as water and air were to our ancestorsтАЩ planet, and not until
we rid ourselves of our inherited preconceptions are we going to learn to
understand it, and control it.
And next to those books, the handbooks of the Church. They caused this,
she thought. They caused it all, when they rejected him. Hypocritical bastards!
Half their foundations were of his philosophy, the genius of his ordered mind
giving their religious dreams substance, transforming a church of mere faith into
something that might last - and command - the ages. Something that might
tame the fae at last, and bring peace to a planet that had rarely known anything
but chaos. But their dreams and his had diverged in substance, and recently they
had come but one word short of damning him outright. After using him to fight
their wars! she thought angrily. To establish their church throughout the human
lands, and firmly fix their power in the realm of human imagination . . . she
shuddered with the force of her anger. It was they who changed him, slowly but
surely - they who had planted the first seeds of darkness in him, even while they
robed him in titles and honor. Knight of the Realm. Premier of the Order of the
Golden Flame. Prophet of the Law.
And damned as a sorcerer, she thought bitterly. Condemned to hell - or just
short of it - because he wants to control the very force that has bested us all