"Katherine Kurtz - Kelson 3 - The Quest for Saint Camber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

"What's the matter. Tiercel? Too fastidious to take a woman who's
carrying another man's child?"
"What makes you so bloody certain it's yours?" Tiercel muttered, tossing
the towel aside and unlooping the strap of a leather satchel from across his
chest.
"How's that?"
"You heard me."
"As a matter of fact, I did. And I'm not at all certain I like your-"
"Just now, I don't much care what you like or don't like!" Tiercel said.
He tossed the satchel on a well-scrubbed trestle table near the fireplace and
hooked one of the stools closer with a booted toe, disturbing the rushes. "Sit
down and act like a prince instead of a stablehand?"
Conall sat.
"Now. The point is, you were screwing around when you should have been
paying attention to the business at hand," Tiercel said sternly. "Anyone could
have walked through that door instead of me. I could have betrayed you. A
prince must never neglect his defenses. And you had defenses available to you
that ordinary men only dream of-but you didn't bother to use them."
"But-who was going to be out on a day like this? Besides, Jowan would
have stopped them."
"Oh? He didn't stop me." Tiercel stalked to the outer door and wrenched
it open, curtly beckoning a sleepy looking Jowan to enter. "Go lie down by the
fire, Jowan," he said. "Take off your wet things and have a nap."
Conall's grey eyes narrowed as he watched the squire obey, but, by the
time Jowan was snoring peacefully in the rushes, he had managed to push his
anger down to a smoldering resentment.
"Very well, you've made your point," he finally said sulkily. "It won't
happen again. I apologize. Am I forgiven?"
His bright smile was both compelling and infectious, and he knew it.
Tiercel only sighed and nodded as he sat at the table opposite the prince.
"So long as you've learned from this little unpleasantness. Are you
ready to work?"
"Of course. What are we going to do?"
"Something I've been meaning to do for several months now," Tiercel
replied, feeling around inside his satchel. "I'm going to start you on proper
warding. Wards are a type of magical protection or defense. Eventually, you'll
learn to use them in conjunction with working other spells. It won't always be
necessary to use a physical matrix to set the wards, but these will help, in
the beginning."
As he extracted a well-worn brown leather pouch and opened it, spilling
a handful of thumbnail-sized black and white cubes into his cupped palm,
Conall leaned closer.
"They look like dice."
"Aye. And so they might have been, a long time ago- or could have been
disguised as dice, once it became dangerous to be Deryni. I've seen spotted
ones, and they work just as well. Notice there are four each of the black and
white. That has an esoteric significance, but we won't bother with that for
now. Most Deryni children begin their formal training with cubes similar to
these. Hold out your right hand."
Hesitantly Conall obeyed, flinching involuntarily as Tiercel tipped them