"Simon Hawke - The Iron Throne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

revealing handsome, ageless features. His thick, silver-streaked black
hair fell almost to his waist and framed a striking face. His forehead
was high and his eyebrows thin and delicately arched. His nose was fine
and blade straight; his cheekbones high and sharply pronounced, typical
of elven physiognomy. The long hair partially concealed large,
gracefully curved and pointed ears; the

mouth was wide and thin-lipped; the strong jawline tapered sharply to a
narrow, well-shaped chin. His eyes, however, were his strongest
features, large and almond-shaped, so light a blue that they were almost
gray, like arctic ice. With his dark coloring, they stood out sharply,
and the effect was magnetic.

Aedan stared at him, and the years seemed to fall away.

"The world of dreams is no less real than the waking one," Gylvain
replied. "However, I take it your question was rhetorical."

"You have not changed," said Aedan with a smile.

"How long has it been? Twenty years? No, by Haelyn, more like thirty.

Yet you are still as I remember you, even after all this time, while I
... I have grown old and gray."

Aedan turned and glanced into the full-length gilt-framed mirror mounted
on the wall. Behind him, Gylvain Aurealis stood reflected, looking just
the same as he remembered him. By contrast, Aedan had changed
enormously. His hair, cropped short as he had worn it since his
midthirties, when he began to lose it, was a grizzled, iron-gray
stubble. His thick, full beard was streaked in shades of gray and
white. His face was lined with age and scarred from battle. The stress
of his responsibilities had given him dark bags below his eyes, and
years of squinting through a helm into glaring sunlight had placed
crow's-feet at their corners. There was a weary melancholy in his gaze
that had not been there only a few short years before. Once shin and
muscular, he was thicker in the waist and chest now, and in the
perpetual dampness of the castle on the bay, his old wounds pained him.

Gylvain's reflection smiled. "You will never seem old to me. I shall
always see you as you were when we first met: a shy, ungainly, coltish
youth, with the most earnest and serious expression I have ever seen on
one so young."

"Your elven vision is far more acute than mine," said Aedan wistfully.

"I have looked for that young boy in my reflection many times, but I no
longer see him." He turned to face the mage. "Is it too late to ask for
your forgiveness?"