"Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 00 - New Spring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

'You shouldn't listen to rumours, Ryne. I've not taken a wound worth mentioning since I
rode south.' Lan decided to twit Bukama if they did get a room, about whether it was already paid
for and how. Indignation might take him out of his darkness.
'The Aiel,' Ryne snorted. 'I never thought they could put paid to you.' He had never faced
Aiel, of course. 'I expected you to be wherever Edeyn Arrel is. Chachin, now, I hear.'
That name snapped Lan's head back to the man across the table. 'Why should I be near the
Lady Arrel?' he demanded softly. Softly, but emphasizing her proper title.
'Easy, man,' Ryne said. 'I didn't mean . . .'Wisely, he abandoned that line. 'Burn me, do
you mean to say you haven't heard? She's raised the Golden Crane. In your name, of course.
Since the year turned, she's been from Fal Moran to Maradon, and coming back now.' Ryne
shook his head, the bells in his braids chiming faintly. 'There must be two or three hundred men
right here in Canluum ready to follow her. You, I mean. Some you'd not believe. Old Kurenin
wept when he heard her speak. All ready to carve Malkier out of the Blight again.'
'What dies in the Blight is gone,' Lan said wearily: He felt more than cold inside.
Suddenly Seroku's surprise that he intended to ride north took on new meaning, and the young
guard's assertion that he stood ready. Even the looks here in the common room seemed different.
And Edeyn was part of it. Always she liked standing in the heart of the storm. 'I must see to my
horse,' he told Ryne, scraping his bench back.
Ryne said something about making a round of the taverns that night, but Lan hardly
heard. He hurried through the kitchens, hot from iron stoves and stone ovens and open hearths,
into the cool of the stableyard, the mingled smells of horse and hay and woodsmoke. A greylark
warbled on the edge of the stable roof. Greylarks came even before robins in the spring.
Greylarks had been singing in Fal Moran when Edeyn first whispered in his ear.
The horses had already been stabled, bridles and saddles and packsaddle atop saddle
blankets on the stall doors, but the wicker hampers were gone. Plainly Mistress Arovni had sent
word to the ostlers that he and Bukama were being given accommodation.
There was only a single groom in the dim stable, a lean, hardfaced woman mucking out.
Silently she watched him check Cat Dancer and the other horses as she worked, watched him
begin to pace the length of the strawcovered floor. He tried to think, but Edeyn's name kept
spinning though his head. Edeyn's face, surrounded by silky black hair that hung below her waist,
a beautiful face with large dark eyes that could drink a man's soul even when filled with
command.
After a bit the groom mumbled something in his direction, touching her lips and forehead,
and hurriedly shoved her half-filled barrow out of the stable, glancing over her shoulder at him.
She paused to shut the doors, and did that hurriedly, too, sealing him in shadow broken only by a
little light from open hay doors in the loft. Dust motes danced in the pale golden shafts.
Lan grimaced. Was she that afraid of a man wearing the hadori? Did she think his pacing
a threat? Abruptly he became aware of his hands running over the long hilt of his sword, aware of
the tightness in his own face. Pacing? No, he had been in the walking stance called Leopard in
High Grass, used when there were enemies on all sides. He needed calm.
Seating himself crosslegged on a bale of straw, he formed the image of a flame in his
mind and fed emotion into it, hate, fear, everything, every scrap, until it seemed that he floated in
emptiness. After years of practice, achieving ko'di, the oneness, needed less than a heartbeat.
Thought and even his own body seemed distant, but in this state he was more aware than usual,
becoming one with the bale beneath him, the stable, the scabbarded sword folded behind him. He
could 'feel' the horses, cropping at their mangers, and flies buzzing in the corners. They were all
part of him. Especially the sword. This time, though, it was only the emotionless void that he
sought.
From his beltpouch he took a heavy gold signet ring worked with a flying crane and
turned it over and over in his fingers. The ring of Malkieri kings, worn by men who had held