"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

In the bright sun they paused for a moment while Branoic yelled at a Cerrmor man to tell everyone heтАЩd
found the wretched fool of a bard at last, and Maddyn happened to look up to one of the high towers.
When he saw the young queen, leaning out the window and laughing and waving to him, his black hiraedd
lifted a little more. At least sheтАЩs happy, he told himself, and by every god, weтАЩll all fight to keep her that
way!



Some days after the wedding, Nevyn remembered the lead curse-talisman that heтАЩd found back in
Pyrdon and been carrying ever since. Although he hated keeping it, he was quite simply afraid to destroy
it, just in case melting or shattering it should work some harm to Maryn by an induced sympathy.
Logically, the act of magic that had created the curse should have had no true power, because it fell
somewhere between outright superstition and the lowest rank of dark dweomer, yet whenever he held
the lead tablet in his hands, he could sense a malevolent power oozing from it like a bad smell. Three
times he tried to perform banishings and exorcisms; three times it stayed stubbornly the same. He tried
meditating about it and scrying over it, all to no result. Whoever had charged it with evil had worked a
spell beyond his powers to remove.

The question was, then, what to do with it. His first thought was simply to bury the thing deep in some
out-of-the-way spot in the dun, but since it had been meant to be buried, he would possibly be increasing
its power by doing so. If he left it hidden in his chambers, someone might stumble across it or even be
actively seeking it. The enemy who had worked the spell was still at large, after all, as either an honest
opponent in CantraeтАЩs court or a traitor here in Cerrmor. Soon Nevyn would be accompanying the king
on his ceremonial progress and his first campaign; if he carried the curse charm on his person, what
would happen if he were captured and searched? It also occurred to him that if one of MarynтАЩs friends
and allies found him with it, he would have some hard explaining to do. He considered taking it to one of
the great temples down in Cerrmor town proper, but priests had been corrupted or temples entered and
robbed too many times before for him to consider it safe there. If he threw it in the ocean, its slow
dissolution might perhaps work the king harm.
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He wondered, too, if he should tell Maryn that the curse existed, but in the end he decided against it. For
the rest of that summer, at least, Maryn absolutely had to project a supernatural air of confidence and
calm if he were going to repair the shattered morale of his new kingdom. The slightest worry that might
have tarnished his golden presence could well mean disaster later. Round and round Nevyn went on the
problem until it occurred to him that there was indeed one person in the kingdom who could guarantee its
safety, at least for as long as it mattered: the queen. She would never leave Dun Cerrmor until the war
was over and Maryn crowned High King in Dun Deverry; if Cerrmor fell and she was captured, that
disaster would mean Maryn was dead, all their hopes irrevocably crushed, and the lead tablet quite
simply irrelevant.

That very morning he went to Otho the dwarf, the silver daggersтАЩ blacksmith, who had been given a big
hut of his own for a forge and living quarters both. Even though he could trust one of the Mountain Folk
to keep an oath of silence more than he could ever trust any human being, he told Otho only that he
needed a strong casket of dwarven silver to contain something evil without ever mentioning what the vile
thing might be. Otho worked night and day for the better part of a week and finally produced, on the