"Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth 4 - Temple of the Winds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

himself?"
"We can find out if you let me do it my way."
"We don't know enough yet; he could end up dead before we find out anything,
then the danger to Richard could become greater."
"All right," Cara said with a sigh, "we will do it your way, as long as you
understand that I have orders to follow."
"What orders?"
"Lord Rahl told us to protect you as we would protect him." With a toss of her
head, Cara flicked her blond braid back over her shoulder. "If you are not
careful, Mother Confessor, and needlessly endanger Lord Rahl with your
restraint, I will withdraw my permission for Richard to keep you."
Kahlan laughed. Her laughter died out when Cara didn't so much as smile. She
was never entirely sure when the Mord-Sith were joking and when they were
being deadly serious.
"In here," Kahlan said. "It's shorter this way, and besides, I want to see
what petitioners are waiting, in view of our strange visitor. He could even be
a diversion to draw our attention away from someone else-the true threat."
Cara's brow twitched as if she had been slighted. "Why do you think I had
Petitioners' Hall sealed and ringed with guards?"
"You did it surreptitiously, I hope. There's no need to frighten the wits out
of innocent petitioners."
"I told the officers not to frighten the people in there if they didn't have
to, but our first responsibility is to protect Lord Rahl."
Kahlan nodded. She couldn't argue with that.
Two heavily muscled guards bowed, along with twenty others nearby, before
pulling open the tall, brassbound doors leading to an arched passageway. A
stone rail supported by fat, vase-shaped balusters ran along the white marble
pillars. The barrier, separating the petitioners in the hundred-foot-long room
from the officials' passageway, was symbolic rather than teal. Skylights
thirty feet overhead lit the waiting room, but left the length of the
passageway to the muted golden light of lamps hung in the peak of each small
Vault in its ceiling.
It was a long-standing custom for people-petitioners-to come to the
Confessors' Palace to seek any number of things, from settlement of
disagreements over the rights of peddlers to coveted street comers, to
officials of different lands seeking armed intervention in border disputes.
Maters that could be handled by city officials were directed to the proper
offices. Matters brought by dignitaries of the lands, if those matters were
deemed to be important enough, or could be handled in no other way, were taken
before the council. Petitioners' Hall was where officers of protocol
determined the disposition of requests.
When Darken Rahl, Richard's father had attacked the Midlands, many of the
officials in Aydindril had been killed, among them Saul Witherrin, the Chief
of Protocol, along with most of his office Richard had defeated Darken Rahl,
and being the gifted heir, had ascended to Master of D'Hara. He had ended the
bickering and battling among the lands of the Midlands by demanding their
surrender in order to forge them all into a force capable of withstanding the
common threat from the Old World, from the Imperial Order.

Kahlan found it unsettling to be the Mother Confessor who had reigned over the