"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 3 - Crown of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

"I am the first-and only-Neocount of Merentha."
Fear made Andrys' bones turn to jelly; he would have fallen, had not the wall held him upright. "The first
Neocount is dead," he gasped. "Dead!" Nine hundred years in the grave, he wanted to say. To shout.
But the words wouldn't come out.

"Hardly," the figure responded. "But that was the story your father preferred, and so it passed for truth in
your schooling. The illustrious Reginal Tarrant! He thought that if he kept you ignorant he might somehow
make you safe." The shadowed head turned to the side briefly as it gazed upon Samiel's ruined head,
then back again. "It didn't work, of course. It never does."

The figure took a step toward him. Terror caused Andrys' bladder to spasm suddenly, and hot urine
trickled down his leg. He wished he could die right here and now, and not wait to be killed like... like
that. Like Samiel, and Imelia, and Mark. Dear God, not like that, please oh please....

But the figure stopped, as if knowing that another step would be one too many for Andrys' frayed nerves.
"He knew the truth." The figure indicated Samiel. "The firstborn has always known the truth. That was
one of the conditions I set for this family, when I first decided to let the line continue. And when he
placed the coronet of this county on his head, when he laid claim to the title that wasn't his to take, he
knew what the price of that would be."

It took him a minute to understand. To believe., "Is

that it?" he choked out at last. "All this... because of that? Just for a title?"

He could sense anger stirring within that dark, faceless form: not hot, like human rage, but as chill and as
biting as an arctic wind. "I gave this family life," the figure pronounced acidly. "And I dictated the
conditions under which it would be permitted to endure. I spared your ancestor when it would have been
just as easy to kill him, not out of human compassion but because I was curious to see what the
descendants of my blood might accomplish. And so I left you my lands, my keep, my wealth, my
library-whose true value is beyond your imagining-all these things and more, a treasury beyond
measurement. Only two things were forbidden to you... and one of those you insist on claiming. Eight
times now." A sweep of one black-cloaked arm encompassed the carnage. "Consider this a reminder."

"You killed them all for that?" he whispered feebly. "Because of Samiel's mistake? All of them?"

For a moment the dark figure regarded him in silence. Andrys was acutely aware of the filth that soiled
his shirt front, the urine that had plastered one pants leg to his flesh. Shame flushed his cheeks, hot blood
suffusing death-white flesh.

"His mistake was defiance," the figure said coldly, "which I will not endure. As for my methods... I find
that the harder the lesson is driven home, the longer it is likely to last. Remember that, when you raise
your own heirs."

Heirs? For a moment he couldn't remember what the word meant, or how it might apply to him. His
heirs? He had no children yet. And never would, if this creature killed him-

Then it sank in. All of it.

Images of the Survivors rose up before him. Haunted figures whose biographies were shrouded in
mystery, who had survived to continue the family when all others died of sickness, or in war, or (the