"David Gemmell - Druss 01 - Druss the Legend" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gemmel David)

unpleasantly. They were just noises, blowing into the air.'
Easing her from him, Druss sat up. 'It is not that
easy, Rowena. The man had been goading me for weeks. He wanted that fight -
because he wanted to humble me. But he did not. No man ever will.' She
shivered beside him. 'Are you cold?' he asked, drawing her into his embrace.
'Deathwalker,' she whispered.
'What? What did you say?'
Her eyelids fluttered. She smiled and kissed his
cheek. 'It doesn't matter. Let us forget Alarin, and enjoy each other's
company.'
'I'll always enjoy your company,' he said. 'I love
you.'
*
Rowena's dreams were dark and brooding and the
following day, at the riverside, she could not force the images from her mind.
Druss, dressed in black and silver and bearing a mighty axe, stood upon a
hillside. From the axe-blades came a great host of souls, flowing like smoke
around their grim killer. Death-walker! The vision had been powerful.
Squeezing the last of the water from the shirt she was washing, she laid it
over a flat rock alongside the drying blankets and the scrubbed woollen dress.
Stretching her back, she rose from the water's edge and walked to the tree
line where she sat, her right hand closing on the brooch Druss had fashioned
for her in his father's workshop - soft copper strands entwined around a
moonstone, misty and translucent. As her fingers touched the stone her eyes
closed and her mind cleared. She saw Druss sitting alone by the high stream.
'I am with you,' she whispered. But he could not hear
her and she sighed.
No one in the village knew of her Talent, for her
father, Voren, had impressed upon her the need for secrecy. Only last year
four women in Drenan had been convicted of sorcery and burnt alive by the
priests of Missael. Voren was a careful man. He had brought Rowena to this
remote village, far from Drenan, because, as he told her, 'Secrets cannot live
quietly among a multitude. Cities are full of prying eyes and attentive ears,
vengeful minds and malevolent thoughts. You will be safer in the mountains.'
And he had made her promise to tell no one of her
skills. Not even Druss. Rowena regretted that promise as she gazed with the
eyes of Spirit upon her husband. She could see no harshness in his blunt, flat
features, no swirling storm-clouds in those grey-blue eyes, no hint of
sullenness in the flat lines of his mouth. He was Druss- and she loved him.
With a certainty born of her Talent she knew she would love no other man as
she loved Druss. And she knew why . . . he needed her. She had gazed through
the window of his soul and had found there a warmth and a purity, an island of
tranquillity set in a sea of roaring violent emotions. While she was with him
Druss was tender, his turbulent spirit at peace. In her company he smiled.
Perhaps, she thought, with my help I can keep him at peace. Perhaps the grim
killer will never know life.
'Dreaming again, Ro,' said Mari, moving to sit
alongside Rowena. The young woman opened her eyes and smiled at her friend.
Mari was short and plump, with honey-coloured hair and a bright, open smile.
'I was thinking of Druss,' said Rowena.