"Mercedes Lackey - Obsidian 02 - To Light A Candle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

That, as much as all the pain and despair, nearly broke Kellen's spirit.

Only his anger saved him.

Anger is a weapon, as much as your sword.

"I'll - show - you!" he snarled through clenched teeth. And went on. Slowly, agonizingly slowly,
blind, aching, terrified, but now, above all else, furious, he drove onward.

Then came the worst part - when the wind and rocks began hitting him from all sides. Kellen
realized that must mean he was near the top of the cairn. Groping blindly, his head still muffled in
his tunic, he slid his hand along the wall in front of his face, until he touched emptiness. The wind
pushed at his fingertips with the force of a river in flood. If he tried to simply walk up to where the
obelisk was, the wind would pluck him off and hurl him to the ground.
Very well. Then he would crawl.

Kellen got down on his hands and knees and crawled up the rest of the stairs, brushing the sand
away carefully from each step before him. It caked on his abraded hands, and every time he wiped
them clean on his tunic, fresh blood welled up from a thousand tiny scratches. And the wind still
blew, cold enough now to steal all sensation from his flesh.

He reached a flat place, and crawled out onto it, pushing against the wind.

Suddenly, without warning, the wind stopped. The silence rang in his ears.

"Well, you make a fine sight," a man said from somewhere above him, sounding amused.

The voice was elusively familiar.

Kellen dragged his tunic down around his neck and stared, blinking, into the watery green light.

He was facing... himself?

Another Kellen stood on the other side of the obelisk, grinning down at him nastily. The point of the
obelisk came just to his heart level. This Kellen was sleek and manicured - no one would ever call
his smooth brown curls unruly! - and dressed in the height of Armethaliehan finery, from his shining
half-boots of tooled and gilded leather to his fur-lined half-cape and the pair of jeweled and
embroidered silk gloves tucked negligently through his gleaming gilded belt. The cape and gloves
were in House Tavadon colors, of course. No one would ever forget which Mageborn City House this
young man belonged to, not for an instant.

Slowly, Kellen got to his feet, though his cramped and aching muscles protested. Instantly,
Other-Kellen clapped his bare hands over the point of the obelisk, blocking Kellen's access to it.

"Think about what you're doing,"Other-Kellen urged him. "Really think about it. Now, before it's too
late. You've had a chance to taste freedom, and you've found it's a bitter wine. Only power can
make it sweet, but you already know the responsibilities that power brings. Even the powerful
aren't really free. The only real freedom we have is of choosing our master, and most people don't
get even that. But you can choose."