"Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 07 - A Crown of Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

the palace stood finished, colonnaded walks and great domes shining with gilt and that one spire reaching to the
heavens.... Her eyes rose to the cloudless sky, to where the spire would peak, and she let out a long sigh. Yes. The
orders would be issued today.
The towering case clock in the room behind her chimed Third Rise, and in the city gongs and bells pealed the hour, the
sound faint here, so high above. With a smile, Elaida left the window, smoothing her red-slashed dress of cream silk
and adjusting the broad, striped stole of the Amyrlin Seat on her shoulders.
On the ornately gilded clock, small figures of gold and silver and enamel moved with the chimes. Horned and snouted
Trollocs fled from a cloaked Aes Sedai on one level; on another a man representing a false Dragon tried to fend off
silver lightning bolts that had obviously been hurled by a second sister. And above the clockface, itself above her head,
a crowned king and queen knelt before an Amyrlin Seat in her enameled stole, with the Flame of Tar Valon, carved
from a large moonstone, atop a golden arch over her head.
She did not laugh often, but she could not help a quietly pleased chuckle at the clock. Cemaile Sorenthaine, raised from
the Gray, had commissioned it dreaming of a return to the days before the Trolloc Wars, when no ruler held a throne
without the Tower's approval. Cemaile's grand plans came to naught, however, as did Cemaile, and for three centuries
the clock sat in a dusty storage room, an embarrassment no one dared display. Until Elaida. The Wheel of Time turned.
What was once, could be again. Would be again.
The case clock balanced the door to her sitting room, and her bedchamber and dressing room beyond. Fine tapestries,
colorful work from Tear and Kandor and Arad Do-man, with thread-of-gold and thread-of-silver glittering among the
merely dyed, hung each exactly opposite its mate. She had always liked order. The carpet covering most of the tiles
came from Tarabon, patterned in red and green and gold; silk carpets were the most precious. In each corner of the
room a marble plinth carved in unpretentious verticals held a white vase of fragile Sea Folk porcelain with two dozen
carefully arranged red roses. To make roses bloom now required the One Power, especially with the drought and heat;
a worthwhile use, in her opinion. Gilded carving covered both the only chairтАФ no one sat in her presence nowтАФ and
the writing table, but in the stark style of Cairhien. A simple room, really, with a ceiling barely two spans high, yet it
would do until her palace was ready. With the view, it would.
The tall chairback held the Flame of Tar Valon picked out in moonstones above her dark head as she sat. Nothing
marred the polished surface of the table except for three boxes of Altaran lacquerwork, arranged just so. Opening the
box covered with golden hawks among white clouds, she removed a slim strip of thin paper from atop the pile of
reports and correspondence inside.
For what must have been the hundredth tune, she read the .message come from Cairhien by pigeon twelve days ago.
Few in the Tower knew of its existence. None but she knew its contents, or would have a glimmer of what it meant if
they did. The thought almost made her laugh again.
The ring has been placed in the bull's nose. I expect a pleasant journey to market.
No signature, yet she needed none. Only Galina Casban had known to send that glorious message. Galina, whom
Elaida trusted to do what she would have trusted to no one else save herself; Not that she trusted anyone fully, but the
head of the Red Ajah more than any other. She herself had been raised from the Red, after all, and in many ways still
thought of herself as Red.
The ring has been placed in the bull's nose.
Rand al'ThorтАФ the Dragon Reborn, the man who had seemed on the point of swallowing the world, the man who had
swallowed entirely too much of itтАФ Rand al'Thor was shielded and in Galina's control. And none who might support
him knew. Even a chance of that, and the wording would have been different. By various earlier messages, it seemed
he had rediscovered how to Travel, a Talent lost to Aes Sedai since the Breaking, yet that had not saved him. It had
even played into Galina's hands. Apparently he had a habit of coming and going without warning. Who would suspect
that this time he had not gone, but been taken? Something very like a giggle rose in her.
Inside another week, two at most, al'Thor would be in the Tower, closely supervised and guided safely until Tar-mon
Gai'don, his ravaging of the world stopped. It was madness to allow any man who could channel to run free, but most
of all the man prophecy said must face the Dark One in the Last Battle, the Light send that it lay years off yet in spite
of the weather. Years would be needed to arrange the world properly, beginning with undoing what al'Thor had done.
Of course, the damage he had wrought was nothing beside what he could have caused, free. Not to mention the
possibility that he might have gotten himself killed before he was needed. Well, that troublesome young man would be