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

тАЬI will, but I do wish you hadnтАЩt told me what it was. If this casketтАЩs got a secret compartment, you
could just have shoved it in and sealed it up.тАЭ

тАЬYou have to know what youтАЩre guarding, Your Majesty, and besides, never would I leave such an evil
thing in someoneтАЩs presence without their consent.тАЭ

тАЬWell, youтАЩre right, of course. Very well, I shall gush over the casket itself, and be very casual about
what I put in it, as if it doesnтАЩt really matter much. And if ever anyone asks me for it, IтАЩll refuse because
to give it away would break poor stunted OthoтАЩs heart.тАЭ

тАЬSplendid, Your Highness! The exact right thing to say.тАЭ

Yet even as he spoke, he felt a cold line of dread coil round his heart, wondering if heтАЩd just given
danger for a gift. Oh, donтАЩt be a dolt, he told himself irritablyтАФthe wretched thing canтАЩt have that much
power, or youтАЩd know! And sure enough, once it was bound inside the dwarven silver and sealed with
his spells, he could no longer sense the slightest trace of evil leaking from either tablet or casket. On the
morrow morning he and Otho together presented the casket to the queen, who in a fine show of being
ever so surprised and pleased gave the dwarf a kiss, which made him blush and stammer and curse
publiclyтАФbut from then on, Otho was the queenтАЩs man, heart and soul.

And together at the head of an army, Nevyn and Maryn set out on the long ride that later historians call
the Rousing of theRiverValley, the summer that would eventually bring lord after lord and warband after
warband round to the new kingтАЩs side and turn the hope of victory from an impotent dream to a sound
gamble. Since he could foresee neither success nor failure that bright morning as they left the towering
stone rings of Dun Cerrmor behind, Nevyn could only hope that heтАЩd made the right decisions in more
than the matter of the curse-tablet. Although the dweomer and the priesthoods had schemed and plotted
and planned for many a long year, the matter was now far beyond their control. With the High King rode
not their politicking, but his Wyrd.



The Wmmglaedd copy of the chronicle broke off in the middle of a page. Jill suddenly realized that gray
morning light had overwhelmed her candle flame, and that her back was aching and stiff from her long
nightтАЩs trance. With a grunt of pain she turned from the lectern and found the fire dead in the hearth.
Annoying though it was to lose the rest of the story, she didnтАЩt really need it, she supposed, because she
could now remember the detail she needed. Otho the dwarf had made the rose ring for the queen to give
to Maddyn the bard, years later, just as a token of thanks for some little favor heтАЩd done her. In the
closed and cloistered atmosphere of that court, where all the women were as confined and guarded as a
treasury, there were those who had chosen to misunderstand the token, justтАФor so Jill suspected,
looking backтАФto give themselves something to do. Whatever the reason, envy had come of it, and
whispering rumor. What came of it she didnтАЩt know, though she could guess that the story had ended
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badly. In fact, as she thought about it, her ignorance was so complete that she could assume that Branoic
had died shortly after the ring was made and givenтАФin some battle, most like.

Those battles were long gone, their stories told by a thousand bards and chroniclers, but their