"Katherine Kurtz - Adept 01 - The Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

already saddled by the time they found riding gear for Peregrine and got down to the stable, and was just
leading out the blood bay mare that was to be Peregrine's mount. The mare nickered as she caught sight of
Adam, and the grey pricked his ears and pivoted on the forehand to look too. Behind them in the stable aisle,
two more heads poked out above stable doors with equine interest.
Their keeper grinned and lifted a hand in affable greeting, almost a salute, as he cross-tied the mare and
began saddling.
"Morning, sir. He's all ready to go, and I'll have Poppy ready in a minute."
"Good morning, John. Thank you," Adam said. As he ran a gloved hand over the grey's satiny neck and down
the near front leg, the animal whuffled softly and presented its face to be scratched.
"And good morning to you, too, Khalid," he murmured, with indulgent compliance. "Ah, you like that, don't
you? Are you and Poppy ready for a little outing?"
"Oh, he'll give you a good ride today, sir," John said with a chuckle, finishing with the mare's girth and moving
on to bridle her. "Not that there's a mean bone in either of them," he added, for Peregrine's benefit. "You
shouldn't have any trouble, Mr. Lovat, if you've ridden much at all."
"I used to hunt, when I was still at school," Peregrine offered.
"Well, then, you'll do fine with this lady. And she'll keep pace with that great grey lump there," he said, giving
Khalid an affectionate smack on the rump as he led the mare past. "She should give you a very good ride."
After John had given him a leg up and helped him adjust his stirrups, Peregrine waited for Adam to mount and
then fell in behind him as they walked the horses out of the stable yard. The mare moved out obediently in
response to his legs, clearly ready to be off, if called upon to do so, but making no demands - a perfect lady,
as John had maintained.
They continued walking for the first ten minutes, to let the horses warm up - and let Peregrine reaccustom
himself to being in the saddle. Then, after a short trot along a drainage ditch that separated two fields, they
set off across a rolling pasture at a canter. In deference to Peregrine's long hiatus from riding, Adam took
them through gates rather than jumping fences and hedges, reining back to a walk as they approached the
wooded slope of Templemor Hill.
It was Adam's intention to have Peregrine look at the castle ruins with an eye to locking in on some of its
resonances from the past. He had set the stage in his previous day's lecture, and it had occurred to him that
the artist might find it less threatening to look at a structure rather than at a person, as he began allowing his
talent of seeing to reassert itself. Ahead, through the ragged lattice of wind-stripped branches, the jagged
ramparts of Templemor gleamed gold-grey in the morning mist - a classic Z-plan fortalice with two headless
stair turrets jutting from opposite corners of a roofless keep.
Adam stood and stretched a little in his stirrups as they approached, wondering what the man riding at his
side would see when asked to look beyond the mere physical of the ruin. He was not seeking or expecting
anything for himself, content merely to be present as facilitator and guide for Peregrine, as the younger man
learned to harness his gifts.
Guard relaxed, then, he was startled when suddenly, in the space of an eye-blink, a fragment of his own past
intruded on the present. As if by magic, a shaft of sunlight lanced through the bare branches above them and
struck the castle walls, fanning in an eye-dazzling corona of golden sunfire. The alchemy of light suspended
time and reason, and revealed, standing before the ruined doorway of Templemor, a tall, bearded man wearing
the red, eight-pointed cross of the Knights Templar on the shoulder of his white mantle, gauntleted hands
resting on the hilt of a great, two-handed broadsword planted in the earth before him.
Between one startled heartbeat and the next, the vision vanished. Adam blinked several times, hoping to
recapture it, but ghosts of even older memories briefly surfaced instead, all unbidden - sitting at a table
littered with scrolls in an ancient libraryтАж. standing at the prow of a papyrus funeral boat drifting along the
west bank of the River NileтАж.
Then Khalid stumbled on a root, and the present moment reasserted itself, and he was once more Sir Adam
Sinclair of Templemor, riding toward a derelict castle in the misty brightness of a Scottish morning.
Shaken more than he hoped he showed, Adam glanced aside at the young man riding at his knee, but
Peregrine seemed not to have noticed, his gaze set attentively ahead on the sun-dappled ruins. Relieved - for