"Huff, Tanya - Wizard 1 - Child Of The Grove 1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

Rael scooped up his mother's hands and kissed them. "The only difference?" he teased. "I refuse to listen to such foolishness. What of your beauty? Your grace? Your wisdom? I could continue for hours... "
Milthra laughed and Rael laughed with her. He'd always felt his mother laughed too seldom. In later years, Rael would recall that afternoon and her laughter when his spirit needed soothing and the shadows needed lifting from his life. He lay with his head in her lap and told her of the things he'd done since he'd been with her last-well most of the things; she was, after all, his mother-and he even told her of his feelings for the Duke of Belkar's blue-eyed daughter, something he had confided to no one else... particularly not the Duke of Belkar's blue-eyed daughter.
But he did not speak of why he had come to the Grove.
All too soon the thick, golden sunlight bathing the Grove began to pale. The shadows grew longer and the breezes grew chill. Rael rose lithely to his feet and extended a hand to the hamadryad. When she stood beside him, he kept her hand clasped tightly in his and stared at the ground, unsure of how to begin. "I... I won't be back for some time. "

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"There is to be war. "
He looked up and saw she gazed sadly at him.
"How did you know?"
"The breezes tell me. Even in sleep I hear them; they say men gather on the western border clutching steel in angry hands. "
Rael spread his own hands helplessly. "The King of Melac has a new and powerful counselor and the man plays the king's weaknesses and desires like, like a shepherd plays his pipes. He's driving the king to create an empire. Father says they begin with us because Melac hates my father for something that happened when they were young.
"And my son will go to see they conquer no empire. "
"I have to do what I can. " He tried to keep the anticipation out of his voice and wasn't entirely successful. This war would be his chance to prove himself. His skill with weapons was his father's heritage, but he moved with a strength and grace no man born of mere mortal could match. In his mind's eye he saw himself a hero, returning from battle not only accepted but adulated by the people he was destined to rule. In his heart, he only hoped he would not disgrace his training.
"And your father?"
His voice was gentle. "The king must ride at the head of his armies. "
"Yes. " War had brought the young king to her so many years before. He had staggered, lost and wounded, into the Grove, stinking of steel and violence, Lord Death close by his side. Against the advice of her sisters, for the Elder Races did not involve themselves with mortals, she had saved him. Saved him and loved him, and Rael had come of it. Full dusk was upon them now. "I must go, Mother. "
"Yes. " War took her son from her, replaced her loving child with this stern young man, so ready to do violence. If he survived he would be further changed,

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and who knew if he would return to the Grove where nothing changed at all. She held him. Held him tightly. And then she let him go because it was all she could do.
"Rael?"
He turned; half in, half out of the Grove.
"Tell your father, I am always here. "
"He knows, Mother. " He waited but she said nothing more. "Mother?"
She shook her head, the brilliant immortal color of her eyes dimmed by a very mortal sorrow. She was the Eldest. She could not beg for the return of her love.
Accustomed to thinking of the hamadryad as his mother, and mothers as always strong, Rael had never noticed before how young Milthra looked, or how frail. He suddenly wanted to protect her, to take her in his arms and tell her everything would be all right, but as he watched she faded and dissolved back into her tree. Only the breezes remained and he had never learned to hear what they said.
Although dark had fallen over Melac, the building of the counselor's tower continued. In the flickering light of torches, long lines of naked and sweating men struggled with block and tackle to lift massive slabs of marble into position. As each slab reached its zenith, a slave was removed from the coffle staked at the work site and placed beneath it. Some screamed, some sobbed, some lay limp and resigned, pushed beyond terror. The slab dropped, then the whole process was repeated for the next. The tower was to be the tallest in the city.
If the men who built it felt anything at all, it was, for the most part, relief that they were not beneath the stones themselves.
This night, as most nights, the king's counselor watched the construction from the wooden dais that gave him an unobstructed view of the work. This night, the king stood beside him, leaning into each death, his

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tongue protruding slightly, his breathing ragged and quick.
A new slave was unchained; a young man, well formed, who, in spite of lash marks striping his back from neck to knees, fought so viciously that four men were needed to escort him to the stone. He screamed, not in terror but in defiance.
The king started at the sound and actually saw the slave. His eyes widened and he clutched at the blue velvet of his counselor's sleeve.
"That looks to be Lord Elan's son. "
"It is. "
"But you can't... "
"He spoke against me, Majesty, and so spoke against you. To speak against the lawful king is treason. The penalty for treason is death. " The golden-haired man smiled and removed the king's hand from his arm. "At least this way his death serves a purpose. Life makes the strongest mortar. "
On the stone, Lord Elan's son strained against invisible bonds, muscles standing out in sharp relief. He threw back his head and howled as the slab above him fell.
On the dais, the king swayed and he moaned deep in his throat.
Rael stretched the two-hour ride home from the Grove to nearly four, dismounting to sit for a time in the moonlight. To his left, waited the shadow that was the forest. To his right, a ribbon of brown led to the distant lights of the town that spread like a skirt outside the palace walls. The Lady's Wood. King's Road, King's Town.
His horse nickered and lipped at his hair, more interested in returning to the comfort of stable and stall than in philosophy.
Grasping the gelding's mane, Rael pulled himself to his feet, mounted, and kicked the horse into a trot. He had always known that someday he would be king. He enjoyed the power and privilege, and even the re-

16 Tanya Huff
responsibilities, of being prince and heir. But sometimes, in the moonlight, he wished he had a choice.
Hoofs thudded onto packed earth, and Rael turned up the King's Road.
The watch had just called midnight when Rael reached town. Because the King's City was so close to the center of Ardhan, miles from any invading army and surrounded on all sides by loyal subjects of the king, it had no wall. The scattered farms and cottages of the countryside merely moved closer together along the road until they gave way to the houses, shops and inns of the city. At the Market Square-well lit even at this hour, for when business in booths and stalls shut down, business in taverns and wineshops began- Rael turned, avoiding the light, preferring to remain unseen in the residential neighborhoods where the inhabitants had long since sought their beds. He told himself he avoided the trouble that would arise if anyone recognized the young man tucked deep in the worn cloak as the prince and heir, riding alone, unescorted. He told himself he didn't need his pocket picked, an unprovoked fight, or an escort back to his father.
He had just passed silently through the merchants' quarters and crossed the invisible but nonetheless real line that separated their homes from the only slightly larger ones of the nobles, when the dark and quiet were snatched from around him.
"Bertram, aren't we home yet?"