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

His voice trailed off in speculation, and Rhys shook his head again. "Too many
ifs, Dan. For all I know, what you've told me could just be the demented death
rattlings of a foolish old man. Besides, what could I do?"
Dan stared up into Rhys's face, aged gray eyes meeting young golden ones. "Am
I a foolish old man, Rhys? I think you know better. Come, you're Deryni. Your
race can probe men's souls. Probe mine, then, and read the truth. I am not
afraid."
"I-am not accustomed to touching the minds of humans in that way." Rhys
hesitated, lowering his eyes uncomfortably.
"Don't be silly. I have felt your healing touch before. If you cannot heal
age, that is not your fault. But you can touch my mind, Rhys. You can read the
truth of what I say."
Rhys glanced behind him at the closed door, then back at the quiet form of
Daniel Draper-perhaps Prince Aidan Haldane. He looked down at the old man's
hand still twined in his and touched the pulse spot, then slowly raised his
eyes once more.
"You're very weak. I should not intrude so near the end. It's your priest who
should be beside you now, not I."
"But I have finished with the priest, and besides, these words were not his to
know," Daniel whispered. "Please, Rhys. Humor a dying man."
"The strain could kill you," Rhys insisted.
"Then I will be dead. I am dying, anyway. The truth is more important than a
few minutes or a few hours more. Hurry, Rhys. There's very little time."
With a sigh, Rhys eased himself to sit on the edge of the bed beside the old
man. Surrounding the hand he still held between his two hands, he gazed down
into the calm gray eyes and willed the eyes to close. The sere lids fluttered
and obeyed as Rhys extended his senses, secured control, and entered.
Swirling grayness engulfed him, broken intermittently by hazy snatches of
color and sound-almost as though he were making his way through patchy,
rolling fog. Only, this was the fog of Death, as the Darkness encroached
already on parts of the old man's mind. The images were flashing past with no
discernible order. He must keep moving, lest he, too, be snared by them.
There. A fleeting ghost-image of a young man- he somehow knew it was Dan's
son-with a young child in his arms. Was the child Cinhil? Then that same man,
older now, laid out on a bier with candles all around, his fair face mottled
by the plague signs. A young, dark-haired man and an old gray one standing
fearfully in the doorway, drawn by their love yet afraid to come closer. The
young man bore the glossy black hair and gray eyes of the Haldanes. Then the
picture was gone.
More darkness-thick, gray-black stuff which was stifling, almost impassable.
But then there was more: a tension building in the shadows, a mindless fear,
and sounds-the sounds of slaughter.
He was a tiny boy, cowering and sobbing beneath a shattered stair, and there
were people screaming and running past him, fire licking at the castle
ramparts, blazing on the thatching of the castle's outbuildings.
Soldiers seized two older boys whom he knew to be his brothers and dragged
them into the already bloody courtyard, then slew them with swords which
hacked and stabbed and were raised up dripping again and again. An infant
sister was dashed against the stones of the courtyard paving, another tossed
aloft and spitted on a laughing soldier's lance.