"Mercedes Lackey - Enduring Flame 01 - The Phoenix Unchained" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

The Phoenix Unchained
Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory




One The Flower Festival

IT WAS FESTIVAL Sennight in Armethalieh, and even though spring was sennights away, the entire
city was garlanded in flowers of every kind. The City's greenhouses were always kept busy for
moonturns in anticipation of the demand, for what was the anniversary of the Great Flowering
without flowers?

Though the City streets were still crusted with the remains of a late snowтАФit was barely Kindling,
and the only flowers to be seen in the natural world were snowdrops and a few hardy early
daffodilsтАФevery house on the street was garlanded in evergreen swags and bright glass and metal
flowers. Even the lampposts had been decorated. Indoors, where it was warmer, every home's
Light-shrine was filled with flowers dedicated to the Blessed Saint Idalia and her brother Kellen the
Poor Orphan Boy, who had broken the power of the Endarkened over ten centuries before.

When he'd been a baby, Harrier Gillain had been sure that all this celebration was entirely for him.
After all, he'd been born during Festival Sennight, and his Naming Day was the first day of Festival.
His three older brothers had been happy to contribute to his confusion for as long as possible,
assuring him that yes, indeed, the City-wide celebration was entirely for him, and certainly it all
meant that he would grow up to be a great Wildmage, perhaps even a Knight-Mage like Kellen the
Poor Orphan Boy.

Even as a baby, Harrier had found that hard to believe. Everyone knew that Knight-Mages
belonged to the Time of Legend. You might as well hope to see a dragon or an Elf. And while
everyone knew that they were both as real as Wildmages, it was also true that they'd withdrawn
to the lands far to the East only a century or two after the Great Flowering. Harrier had more
chance of meeting a Wildmage, and he had about as much chance of that as he had of... well, of
becoming the Chief Magistrate of Armethalieh, Highest of the Nine.

But that was something he'd actually stopped thinking about a very long time ago. These days,
Harrier knew exactly how his future would go. Once he'd finished his schooling, he would do exactly
as his father had done, and his father, and his father, for more generations than Harrier could
count. He would do just as his brothers had already done, and go to work for their father, Antarans
Gillain, the Harbormaster of Armethalieh.

His eldest brother Eugens worked in the Customs House. His second-eldest brother Carault was
apprenticed to a captain who plied a packet (one in which Antarans Gillain owned shares) between
the Harbor and the Out Islands; some day, Carault vowed, he would earn his Sea Mastery and
captain a Deep Voyager to the Selken Lands at the far side of Great Ocean.

And then there was Brelt.

Harrier sighed.

Brelt was twentyтАФthree years older than HarrierтАФand the Gillains had thought that he would be