"Katherine Kurtz - Camber 1 - Camber Of Culdi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

incidents best forgotten by their more contemplative brethren.
She consoled herself with the probability that Joram would not receive the
news until he got home for Michaelmas two days hence, then stood and stretched
and fished for a missing slipper in the rushes with one stockinged toe,
bidding the hound remain in the hall.
Perhaps, by Michaelmas, the situation would have resolved itself-though Evaine
doubted it. But whatever the outcome, the MacRories' Michaelmas would be a bit
more sober than usual this year. Joram would be home, of course, bringing her
beloved Rhys with him; but Cathan and his wife and sons must remain in Valoret
with the Court. The young king was demanding, and no more than on the time and
attention of his favorites, like Cathan. Evaine remembered the long months her
father had spent at Court, when he had been in the old king's service.
A squire came and bent his knee to her, and she bantered with him briefly
before handing over the missive he was to deliver to her brother. Then she
pulled her mantle close and crossed the rush-strewn hall, to make her way up
the narrow, newel staircase to her father's study. She and Camber had been
translating the classic sagas of Pargan Howiccan, the Deryni lyric poet, and
this afternoon Camber had promised to go over a particularly difficult passage
with her. She marvelled again at the many facets of the man who was her
father, fond memories accompanying her up the spiral stair.
Camber's secular successes had never been quite anticipated, nor were they by
design. In his youth, he had been preparing for the clergy and had earned
impressive academic credentials at the new university in Grecotha, under some
of the greatest minds of the century. There would have been no limit to his
rise in the Church.
But when plague took two elder brothers and left him heir to the MacRorie
lands and name-and he not yet under his final vows-he had found himself quite
rudely plucked from the religious life by his father and thrust into the
secular world-and found he liked it. Further honing of his abilities as an
educated layman, and an earl's son at that, had been accomplished, earning him
wide academic notoriety long before he was first called to the Court at
Valoret. When the old king's father, Festil III, had sought the most brilliant
men in the land to advise him, Camber had had little competition. The next
quarter-century was spent mostly in the royal service.
But that was past. Now in his late fifties, Camber had retired three years
ago, on the death of King Blaine, to his beloved Caerrorie, birthplace of
himself and his five children. It was not the principal seat of the Culdi
earls; that was reserved to the great fortress tower of Cor Culdi, on the
Kierney border, which Camber still visited several times a year to preside
over the feudal court. But here, near to the capital and his children's active
lives, he was free at last to resume the academic pursuits which he had
abandoned for the Court so many years before-this time in the company of a
fair, witty, and insatiably curious daughter whose depths he had but lately
begun to discover.
If confronted, he would have vigorously denied that he favored any one of his
children above the others, for he loved all of them fiercely; but Evaine
unquestionably occupied a special place in his life and his heart-Evaine,
youngest of his living children and the last to remain at home. Evaine
accepted this facet of her father as she accepted all the others, without
consciously stopping to analyze it-and without needing to.