"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 4 - Mother Of Winter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

net and line,' '' his voice stumbled over unfamiliar words, an antique inflection, " 'and
bring it to me, for I will not be robbed of my ... my quarry . . .' What's quarry, Rudy?"
He opened his eyes.
"Quarry is what you catch when you go hunting." Rudy gazed into the hearth,
wondering how long it had been since black egrets had haunted the marshlands below
the royal city of Gae. A hundred years? Two hundred? It was part of his wizardry to
know, but at the moment he couldn't remember.
Ingold could have provided the information out of his head, along with a mild remark
about junior mages who needed their notes about such things tattooed on their arms-
along with their own names-for lagniappe.
"Sounds like a mean boy to me, Pugsley."
"He was." Tir's eyes slipped shut again, but his face was troubled now, as he picked
and teased at the knot of deep buried memories, the recollections of another life. "He
was mean because he was scared all the time. He was scared ... he was scared..."
He groped for the thought. "He thought everybody was going to try to hurt him, so
they could make somebody else king and not him. His daddy's brothers, and their
children. His daddy told him that. His daddy was mean, too."
He looked up at Rudy, who had an arm around his shoulders where they sat side by
side on the sheepskin rugs of the cell floor. Even the royal chambers of the Keep of
Dare were mostly small and furnished simply with ancient pieces found in the Keep,
or with what had been hewn or whittled since the coming of the remnant of the
Realm's people.
The journey down the Great South Road, and up the pass to the Vale of Renweth at
the foot of the still higher peaks, had been a harsh one. Those who'd gone back along
the route the following spring in quest of furnishings thrown aside to lighten the
wagons had found them not improved by a season under mud and snow.
"But why would being scared all the time make him be mean?" Tir wanted to know.
"Wouldn't people be nastier to him if he was mean?"
"If they were his daddy's servants, they couldn't be mean back," pointed out Rudy,
who'd learned a good deal about customary behavior in monarchies since abandoning
his career as a motorcycle painter and freelance screw-up in Southern California.
"And maybe when he was mean he was less scared."
Tir nodded, seeing the truth of that but still bothered. As far as Rudy could ascertain,
Tir didn't have a mean bone in his body. "And why would his daddy's brothers want
to be king instead of the boy? Being king is awful."
"Maybe they didn't know that."
Tir looked unconvinced.
As well he might, Rudy thought. Tir remembered being king.
Over, and over, and over.
Most of what he recalled today would be of more interest to Gil than to himself, Rudy
reflected. She was the one who was engaged-between relentless training with the
Guards and her duties on patrol and watching the Keep's single pair of metal doors-in
piecing together the vast histories of the realms of Darwath and its tributary lands; its
relationships with the wizards, with the great noble Houses, with the Church of the
Straight God, with the southern empires and the small states of the Felwood and the
distant seaboard to the east.
She could probably figure out which king this mean boy who shot at netted birds had
grown up to be, and who his daddy was, and what politics exactly had caused his
uncles to want to snuff the little bastard- - -no loss, by the sound of it.
Except that if that boy had not grown up and married, he would not have passed down