"Katherine Kurtz - Heirs 03 - Bastard Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)
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The nagging drizzle of the night before had yielded to clearing skies at dawn, but a persistent
overcast remained even at noontime on this chill day in early June of the Year of Our Lord 928,
now seventh in the reign of Rhys Michael Alister Haldane, King of Gwynedd. Climbing to the
castle's highest rooftop walk, two women had braved a cutting wind to seek out a sheltered angle
between cap-house and rampart wall, a natural sun trap that was warm enough to shrug off fur-lined
cloaks and begin to thaw chilled bones while they resumed their watch of the day before.
It was a better place than most to await the return of their men, now several days overdue. To
the south they could see for miles across the vast plain of IomaireтАФand a lesser distance
eastward, to where the mists of the Rhelljan foothills obscured the approach to the vital Coldoire
Pass. It was toward this pass that their men had ridden, more than a week ago, and it was toward
Coldoire that the elder of the pair now turned her gaze yet again, shading her dark eyes against
the glare of sunlight on persisting tatters of fog.
She had kept this kind of vigil all too many times before. Sudrey of Eastmarch had been
chatelaine of this castle for fully twenty years. She was hardly more than a child herself when
she first came to Lochalyn as a bride and, within the year, bore the daughter who would become the
taller, redheaded young woman fretting at her side. Apart from the death of a beloved brother, a
decade ago, the intervening years had been mostly kind, though she and Hrorik had never been
blessed with any more children. Stacia was their only child and sole heir, herself now a mother,
suckling an infant son but hours old when his father and grandfather had spurred urgently toward
the Coldoire Pass to investigate reports of Torenthi troop incursions.
"D'ye think it's only yesterday's storm that's delayed them?" Stacia suddenly blurted,
again, clasping her son closer. "Dear God, what if sommat's happened to Corban? They should hae
been back days ago. Oh, sommat's happenedтАФI know it has!"
"Hush, child. We don't know anything yet."
But as Sudrey of Eastmarch gazed out at the Coldoire mists, her lips compressing in a tight,
expectant line, she very much feared that she did know more than she cared to admit. Not of
Stacia's beloved Corban, but of her own dear Hrorik.
The dread confirmation would come soon; she could feel it. She carried but little of the blood
of the magical race that once had ruled this land, and she had denied what she had for more than
half her life, but it was enough to give her sudden, blinding flashes of unsought knowledge when
she least expected or wanted it. Nor had she ever received but rudimentary training in the use of
the powers that might have been hers to command, for she and her brother had been orphaned young
and brought up by their uncle, a Deryni lordling whose abuse of his power and privilege eventually
had led his tenants to turn on him and kill him.
That had been just on the eve of the overthrow of King Imre of Festil and the Haldane
Restoration. After that had come the turmoil and wars that left her and her brother hostages of
Hrorik's father, the fierce but kindhearted Duke Sighere of Claibourne, for she and Kennet were
both of them distant kin to the royal House of Torenth. In those days, she had deemed it the
better part of prudence to pretend that she had no powers at all; and after a time, she had almost
forgotten that she ever did. She had never expected to fall in love with one of her jailer's sons
...
Her wistful recollections had distracted her from her watch across the castle ramparts, so that
it was Stacia who first saw the riders, first only a handful and then dozens of them, picking
their way slowly and painfully along the muddy, winding track that led down from the mist of the
Rhelljans to approach the castle gates.
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