"ED Greenwood - Band of Four 01 - The Kingless Land" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

between the Windfangs to the north, and the TalaglatladтАФthe peaks you see from RagalarтАФto the
south, is now the Kingless Land: a lawless string of battling baronies. A good place to stay out of
until the Sleeping King wakes."
Flaeros raised an eyebrow. "That's more than a child's tale?"
The old man shrugged. "You know how such things are .. . yet it's curious; with bards spinning
new words for centuries, that tale never changes: the last true king of Aglirta will awaken when the
Dwaerindim are set just so, at the right place."
"Yes," Flaeros recalled eagerly. "The enchanted stonesтАФare they just, well, stones? I was told
they were gems: huge jewels that could each fill a man's palm!"
The old man spread his hands. "Four old stones, he who saw them said. .. and being a bard,
Elloch would have embroidered his tale if what he'd seen left him room to do so."
"But that was but a dream," Flaeros protested.
Golden eyes flashed sudden fire. "'But a dream'? Lad, what do you think bardsтАФand magesтАФ
and lovers high and low feast on? What do you think barons and kings heed and hunger for?
Dreams drive us all!"
"But I want to hear truth. Dreams aren't truth!"
"They can be the goblet that holds it."
The young Delcamper frowned at that. Raking the air as if waving the thought aside to consider
laterтАФor neverтАФhe asked fiercely, "But you believe all that? The Sleeping King, and Aglirta rising
again?"
Golden eyes met his steadily. "Aye. I do. I doubt I'll live to see it happen, and I scoff at the notion
his rising will at one magic stroke restore peace and bounty to the landтАФI think it'll bring us a war
leader who'll have to swing his blade mightily for years to hammer Aglirta together again. But there
is a Sleeping King, waiting to be awakened. Somewhere."
The young bard-to-be muttered, "Yet I'm hardly apt to go tripping over him outside the gates, am
I?"
Old lips twisted wryly. "True enough, young lion. The corpse of a brigand, or the farmer he
knifed, per-haps, but not a snoring monarch."
Flaeros stared at him, eyes growing large. "What? Just how dangerous is the Kingless Land?
Should I buy a sword on the way back to my room?"
The old man's smile thinned. "Oh, it's safe enough here in Sirlptar. Life's not bad upriver, either,
if you belongтАФfirmly under the gauntlet of this or that whim-ridden baron or Tersept. Wolves and
worse roam the fallen baronies. I'd not head into the forest without a blade, noтАФbut then, were I
you, alone and new to Aglirta, I'd not go out into the forest at all. A blade stops no arrows."
Flaeros shook his head. "I'd heard Aglirta was beautiful but dangerous; one had to be careful.
You make it sound as if 'careful' means bring your own armed host, loyal mages and all!"
The old man smiled and propped one battered boot up on a chair. A flourish of his arms seemed
no more than a stretching of old limbs, but Maershee appeared before Flaeros could draw breath,
as if summoned up out of the empty floor by a spell. Setting sparkling gob-lets of sweet-smelling
wine before them both, she van-ished again without a sound.
"These are interesting days in Aglirta," the old man replied calmly, "what with the fall of the
Golden Grif-fonтАФBaron Blackgult, that is, who ruled the barony of BlackgultтАФand the rise of his
old rival Silvertree."
"Another baron?" Flaeros hazarded, sipping. This new wine was like the juiciest berries he'd
ever tasted, drowned in liquid fire.
The old man nodded. "There's an Aglirtan saying you'd do well to remember: 'Never trust a
Silvertree.' He's made swift work of pillaging Blackgult and almost built himself into a new king of
the Kingless Land, with at least three barons on the verge of kneeling to him."
"Almost? Will he rule it all?"
The lionlike mane of air shook in a firm no. "Faerod Silvertree's cruelty has ever clouded his