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

court as well as watching the corridor outside the cell where the books were.
He left his staff with her, the light of it glistening on the vile water underfoot and on
the wrinkled, cranial masses of the slunch. What they couldn't load onto Yoshabel,
Ingold rehid, higher and drier and surrounded by more spells, to keep fate and rats
and insects at bay until someone could be sent again on the long, exhausting journey
from Renweth Vale to retrieve them.
In addition to books--of healing, of literature, of histories and law they found treasure,
room after room of Church vessels of gold and pearl and carven gems, chairs crusted
with garnets, ceremonial candleholders taller than a man and hung with chains of
diamond fruit; images of saints with jeweled eyes, holding out the gem-encrusted
instruments of their martyrdom; sacks of gold and silver coin.
These they left, though Ingold took as much silver as he could carry and a few of the
jewels flawless enough to hold spells in their crystalline hearts. The rest he
surrounded with Ward-signs and spells. One never knew when such things would
come in handy.
They took turns at watch that night. Even in lovemaking, which they did by the glow
of the courtyard fire, neither fully relaxed-it would have been more sensible not to do
it, but the strange edge of danger drew at them both.
Now and then a shift in the wind brought them the smells of wood smoke and raw
human waste, and they knew there were ghouls-or perhaps bandits--dwelling
somewhere in the weedy desolation along the canals.
Gil, her face discolored and aching in spite of all Ingold's spells of healing, fell asleep
almost at once and slept heavily; wrapped in his fur surcoat, Ingold sat awake by the
bead of their fire, listening to the dark.
This was how Gil saw him in her dream the second night, when she realized that he
had to die.
They had made love, and she dreamed of making love to him again, in the cubicle
they shared, a small inner cell in the maze of cells that were the territory of the
Guards on the first level of the windowless Keep.
She dreamed of falling asleep in the gentle aftermath, her smoky dark wilderness of
hair strewed like kelp on the white-furred muscle of his chest, the smell of his flesh
and of the Guards' cooking, of leather oil from her weaponry and coat, filling her
nostrils, smells for which she had traded the car exhaust and synthetic aromatics of a
former home.
She dreamed that while still she slept, he sat up and drew the blankets around him.
His white hair hung down on his shoulders, and under the scarred lids his eyes were
hard and thoughtful as he looked down at her. There was no gentleness in them now,
no love-barely even recognition.
Then he began, while she slept, to work magic upon her, to lay words on her that
made her foolish with love, willing to leave her friends and family, her studies at the
University of California, as she had in fact left all the familiar things of the world of
her birth. He lay on her words that made her, from the moment of their meeting, his
willing slave.
All the peril she had faced against the Dark Ones, all the horror and fire, the wounds
she had taken, the men she had killed, the tears she had shed... all were calculated,
part of his ploy. Taken from her with his magic, rather than freely given, love of him.
The anger was like a frozen volcano, outraged, betrayed, surging to the surface and
destroying everything in its path.
Rape, her mind said. Betrayal, greed, lust, hypocrisy... rape.
But he had laid spells on her that kept her asleep. She would not be free of him, she