"Katherine Kurtz - Camber 3 - Camber the Heretic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

For the past five years, Gregory had been a member of the powerful and very
secret alliance of Deryni known as the Camberian Council, so-called at the
insistence of Archbishop Jaffray, also a member, who had felt the name
appropriate as a reminder of the ideals the group strove to uphold. Rhys and
Evaine were members, as were Joram and Jebediah and Camber
himselfтАФthough Jaffray and Gregory, of course, did not know that last.
Over the eight years of their existence, the Camberian Council had done
much to police the ranks of less responsible Deryni and to keep the peace
between the races, Deryni and human; and Evaine's continued research, now
supposedly in conjunction with Bishop Alister instead of her father, had
unearthed a wealth of hitherto lost knowledge of their ancient Deryni forbears.
Grecotha, where Camber now made his home, had been and continued to be a
mine of magical information. And Gregory, Earl of Ebor, had been a part of
much of it.
Now Gregory lay in a delirium from which he seemed unable or unwilling to
escape, neither royal patronage nor Camberian affiliation able to help him quell
the unbridled energies which ran amok in his body and sometimes in the
room. Even his eldest son and heir, a studious young man not unskilled
himself in the channeling of Deryni might, had not been able to break the
cycle. The floor before the fireplace was still littered with shards of smashed
crockery and glass which none of the servants were bold enough to clean
upтАФmute testimony to the potential danger of a High Deryni lord apparently
gone mad.
Pensive, Rhys paused before one of the earl's expensive colored windows
which had thus far escaped destruction and laid both palms flat against the
sun-warmed glass, wondering idly how the earl had missed them. He and
Evaine, his wife and working companion of nearly thirteen years, had tried on
arrival to ease Gregory's pain and ascertain the extent of his injuries. The two of
them were strong enough psychically that the earl could not breach their
shields and do them serious threat in his incoherent condition.
But their patient had thrashed about so violently when touched that they
dared not maintain the contact for a proper reading, lest he blindly begin
flinging objects once more in his delirium. Nor was his thrashing doing his
physical injuries any good.
The injuries to his body were easy enough to assess. A dislocated shoulder
he surely had, by the angle of the arm inside the loose blue tunic; and most
likely a fractured collarbone, as well, though Rhys could not be certain of that
until his patient permitted a more thorough examination.
That left some other explanation to account for Gregory's irrational
behaviorтАФperhaps a severe head injury, though neither his son nor his steward
could remember him hitting his head at the time of the accident. Still, a Deryni
of Gregory's proven ability simply did not lose control for no good reason.
Rhys's amber eyes narrowed as he let them focus through the red and blue
glass. With a resigned sigh, he ran one hand through unruly red hair and
moved back toward the fireplace and his wife. Evaine sat huddled in her
fur-lined travelling cloak, quietly watching her husband and the man they had
come to heal.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, as he crouched beside his medical
satchel and began rummaging inside.
 Rhys shook his head and sighed again. "We're going to have to sedate him,