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

look.
"Is it solid?" he whispered.
"Touch it and find out," Tiercel replied. "Go ahead," he added, at
Conall's hesitation. "It won't hurt you-not set this way, at any rate."
"I suppose that's meant to be reassuring," Conall muttered, prodding
tentatively with a fingertip. It felt not quite solid, and made his finger
tingle, as when an arm or leg went to sleep, but the sensation was not
painful.
"Poke a little harder," Tiercel suggested, watching him closely.
Conall complied. His finger encountered more resistance, and a stronger
tingling sensation, the farther he pushed it in, but even when he tried with
all his strength, he could not quite manage to touch his ring.
"That's enough of that," Tiercel finally said, gesturing for him to pull
back. "Now I'm going to make a subtle alteration." He held his hand over the
domelet for a few seconds, not doing anything that Conall could detect, then
blinked and glanced up at Conall again. "Now touch it."
Conall started to obey, but a blue-violet spark arced between the dome
and his fingertip with painful consequences before he could even make contact.
He gasped as he wrenched his hand away, looking up at Tiercel with only thinly
veiled anger as he nursed his wounded finger in his mouth. It was all but
blistered at the tip.
"What the devil did you do that for?" he demanded.
"So you would have some inkling of what this spell could do," Tiercel
said mildly. "Now suppose it were covering an entire room rather than just
your ring. Do you remember the protective dome that Kelson and Charissa
raised, when they fought at Kelson's coronation?"
"Of course," Conall breathed. "But they didn't use ward cubes-did they?"
"No. But some of the principles are the same. Actually, the first
version is the more useful for general purposes-and there are variations
between." Tiercel passed his hand over the dome again, then turned his palm
briefly toward Conall. "Now try it again."
"Is it going to kill me this time, instead of just burning me?" Conall
asked, still sucking resentfully at his wounded fingertip.
"Come, now. Would I kill you, after all the work I've put into you in
the past year?"
Conall only snorted in answer; but after taking a deep breath, he did
reach out gingerly to touch the dome again. This time, his finger passed
through its misty outline with no more sensation than going through fog. With
elation in his eyes, he speared the ring with his fingertip and pulled it out,
looking up at Tiercel in triumph.
"Got it!"
"Of course. That time, the wards were attuned to you. Now, put it back,
and I'll show you how we dismantle the wards. Then I'll let you practice."
Two hours later, Conall had formed and neutralized the wards several
times under Tiercel's supervision-though only in the primary, non-lethal mode-
and was confident he could now do so without assistance if the need arose.
"Hmmm, I daresay you probably could. But there's no need to rush
things," Tiercel cautioned, when they had replaced the cubes in their pouch
and Conall had made none too subtle inquiries about acquiring a set of his
own. "Perhaps I'll have you a set by the time you return from the summer