"Mercedes Lackey - Bard's Tale 3 - Prison of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

what distracted his mentor today. Normally he would
have landed me on my backside by now. He knew he
was an average swordsman; Naitachal was a master,
with uncounted years of practice behind him. Was
something wrong? Had the elf learned something on
his last journey to cause him worry?
The bardlings thoughts wandered slightly, enough
to give the Dark Elf an advantage.
"Look!" Naitachal shouted, pointing with his free
hand. "A comet!"
Alaire looked without thinking, following Nai-
tachal's gaze and pointing finger, to something above
and behind him. As his attention wavered, Naitachal
dropped his own blade to the side and shouldered into
him. The next second, he was sitting in the dust in an
undignified heap.
Naitachal regarded him calmly with disappoint-
ment and faint, elven amusement. "I can't believe you
fell for that, bardling."
"Not fair!" Alaire protested weakly, somehow man-
aging to laugh at himself. Boy, was that stupid. Fell, or
rather stepped, right into that one. "I was winning and
you cheated."
"If you were really winning you wouldn't be sitting
there like that," Naitachal said. "We're getting to the
point in your training when almost anything is fair.
The real world is like that. Assassins," he added, his
sword waving in the sunlight as if to punctuate the
sentence, "will go to any lengths to kill their mark."
"What would an assassin want with me?" he replied,
but only half seriously. Someone might want me dead,
if only to get at my father. Being the eighth son of the
King put him in an awkward position. Derek, the first
born and oldest brother, would almost certainly
become king one day. The other brothers were train-
ing for important government or military positions.
Yet, the King had never planned on having so many
sons. As he once half-complained to the Queen, any
other woman would have produced at least a few
daughters along the way. Eventually he ran out of
things to do with them.
Alaire, being the eighth and youngest son, enjoyed
the rare luxury of choosing his life's work. He had been
a very precocious child, and at six, he had decided to
become a Bard. Fortunately, Naitachal was an old
friend of the King as well as a loyal friend to many
generations of the family. No one questioned who his
Master would be.
This had not been a childish whim, but a real voca-
tion. Naitachal had been able to assure the King that