"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Both the dark-eyed little ex-priest and the slim young woman shook their heads. Their ignorance was
scarcely a surprise, as neither had received formal training in wizardry. The Dark Ones had been
hideously efficient in wiping out the schools in the City of Wizards and everyone else with obvious ability
in the art.
"Well, I've never heard of such, either," said Hethya. "And believe me, your Ladyship, I've looked."
"It is a rare-a very rare-phenomenon." Uncle Linok spoke for the first time, from the corner by the
hearth. He adjusted the shawls and blankets wrapped about him, wool and fur and the combed and spun
underwool of the mammoth, yak, rhinoceros, and uintatheria that the Keep's hunters trapped and
speared in the winter when the great lumbering animals migrated from the North.
"But it is by no means unheard of. As a collector and collator of old manuscripts myself, I've found
mention of it only once, in the Yellow Book of Harilomne."
"Harilomne?" Brother Wend straightened up, dark eyes growing wide. "Harilomne the Heretic? He was a
mage of great power, who sought out and studied all records of the arts of the Times Before, in the days
of Otoras Blackcheeks, my Lady," he explained, turning to Minalde. "It was said he knew more about
those lost arts than any man living, though no one knows how he found it out. No one has ever found his
library..."
"And just as well," said the Bishop Maia. "Just because a thing was wrought by the mages of those times
does not mean that it was wholesome, or worthy of being found. The Times Before were years of great
evil as well as great knowledge. Some of the knowledge Harilomne uncovered was used to great ill, as
anyone will tell you, my Lady."
"But three of his books were supposed to be at Gae," put in Rudy. "That's what that merchant guy last
month told Ingold. That he'd seen them in the cellar of a wrecked villa there. That's why Ingold took off
the way he did."
"And well he should," said Linok. "All knowledge, all magic, is precious in these times." He made a
gesture, then, of stroking his ragged beard, and something in his movement-the way his hand came up,
wrist leading like an actor's-snagged at the Icefalcon's mind. An impression, gone immediately, that he
knew this man. Had seen him somewhere before.
But the round face, the wide-set eyes, and the snub nose were not familiar. Someone who looked like
him? A kinsman?
But he knew as soon as he phrased the question that it wasn't that. Linok went on, "The single reference
in the Yellow Book speaks of a girl in the reign of Amir the Lesser who was 'possessed of a spirit of her
ancestors,' who apparently spoke languages unknown to any in the world. She could identify and explain
an 'apparatus' said to have stood in the vaults beneath the Cathedral of Prandhays since the founding of
the city. What this apparatus was the book did not say, and the apparatus itself is now long gone, but it
was said that the thing produced a great light, and while the light shone none could enter or leave the
Cathedral, nor certain areas of its grounds."
"A force field?" Rudy looked across at Gil-the word he used was unfamiliar, in the tongue of their own
world that neither spoke much anymore. "I'll be buggered. You ever hear Ingold mention that?"
She shook her head.
"And was it an apparatus," asked Minalde, folding small slim hands in her embroidered lap, "that you
came to the Vale of Renweth to seek, Hethya?"
The woman hesitated for a long time, her eyes seeking Linok's. The old man nodded.
"I think we can trust these good people, my child."
One could have heard a snowflake fall in that lamp-lit golden room.
"She-Oale Niu-says there were caves or something in the cliffs an the western side of the valley." Hethya
brought the words out hesitantly, as if dredging them from deep within her mind. "She says she and some
other people, wizards I think, hid up there from the Dark Ones. They walled up things, weapons and ...
and other things I'm not understanding, to hide them there from enemies, after they got the Keep built."
The whole room was an indrawn breath. Hope, wanting, flashed between Rudy's eyes and Minalde's,
palpable as the leap of summer lightning from cloud to cloud.