"Lisle,.Holly.-.Vincalis.The.Agitator1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

УNever for nothing,Ф Wraith said between sobs. УWhat I do for you is never for nothing. YouТre my friends. YouТre my family. YouТre all I have in the world.Ф
УThatТs why he went back,Ф Jess said softly. УBecause he loved you.Ф
He looked up at her. In the dark, she saw the gleam of his tear-filled eyes and the pale blur that was the rest of his face. He looked haunted, haggard. Despairing. УI canТt go to get him, Jess. After my brother, I swore I would never chance killing anyone else. HeТs already had the Way-fare in him for too long. I canТt get him back. And I wonТt try. I wonТt kill him, too.Ф
УHe knew that. He knew when he went.Ф
УBut weТre going to get out of here, Jess. And someday, IТm going to come back, and IТm going to find a way to free everyone whoТs in here. Every single one.Ф
She held his hand and nodded. УYou will. I know you will. You can do anything, Wraith.Ф And then she hugged him, and prayed that once they were free of this place, he would never look at the Warrens again. She would miss Smoke; her heart ached for him, and for the knowledge that only two days had stood between him and hope.
But the Warrens had a poison to them, a creeping, insidious evil that she could feel hanging in the air, leaching the life out of her day by day by day, and she feared that if Wraith didnТt get away and stay away, he would at last fall victim to that poison.

УGrath Faregan, bound and blindfolded you come into this chamber to take an oathЧto swear fealty not to magic, and not to the government of lesser men, but to the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest. We hold the reins of the world in our hands, and you have, by word and action, proven that you deserve to be one among us. Before you passed through the final doorway, you were told that you could only pass through it again in one of two waysЧeither as our friend or as a corpse. Do you acknowledge that you came here of your own free will?Ф
УI do,Ф the bound man said.
УWill you take the test of loyalty?Ф
УI will,Ф he said.
УKnow that if you fail, you will dieЧand your death will be terrible. You still have the option of a quick and merciful death, should you so choose.Ф
УIТll take the test.Ф
УVery well.Ф Two men removed the bonds from FareganТs hands and the hood from his head. Shackles still held his ankles to the dais in the center of the floor.
He could see nothing beyond a brilliant light that poured at him from all directions. He lifted his chin, and took a deep breath, and waited.
From all sides, then, spells attacked him. He knew that under no circumstances could he defend himself in any way or resist or reverse what was done to him. He proved his loyalty by proving he acceded to the will of those above him, whoever they might be. But when his body caught fire, he needed every bit of his control to let himself burn. He screamed, he fell to the groundЧbut he did not use the power at his disposal to put the fire out.
He smelled his own flesh burning, and he wept, and he pissed himself from fear and painЧand then, suddenly, the ordeal ended. Though he still had pain in his right leg, in every other way he was fine.
УStand,Ф one of the voices from the darkness said.
He stood. The right leg screamed, but he bore it without a whimper. No signs of piss, no signs of fire, no smell of smoke or roasting skin.
УRepeat after me: I am a friend of the Inquest, a brother of the Secret Masters of Matrin, and I acknowledge no power save that of the Master of the Inquestа.а.а.а.Ф
Faregan repeated the words.
УNo god, no vowmate, no child shall come before the needs of the Inquestа.а.а.а.
УNo life shall be sacred, if I am ordered to end itа.а.а.а.
УNo law shall be sacred if I am ordered to disobey itа.а.а.а.
УFrom this day until death, the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest is my first family, my first love, and my sole master, even to death.Ф
As he finished repeating the oath, a voice said, УThe brand on your leg is your markЧthe mark that you are chosen. Your life is bound to itЧif you deface it or remove it, you shall in that instant die. You are ours, and we are yours. And together we rule the world. Welcome.Ф
The bright lights went down, and a cluster of old men moved around him, and hugged him, and gave him the clasp of familyЧright hand to right hand, third and fourth fingers curled tight to the palm.
Faregan wept with the joy of it. He was one of the Masters of the Inquest at last. As low in the order as a Master could be, but still a Secret Master. Time and good fortune would carry him higher, he thought. And if it did not, still he stood among the only men in the world he had ever cared to join.

Wraith sat in the basement, listening to Jess breathe. For a while he sat next to her, watching her curled on her little pile of rags. In the next few days her life would change, and he couldnТt know whether he was taking her into a disaster or rescuing her from hell. Trusting, she slept.
Wraith couldnТt sleep, though.
He moved to the top of the stairs and opened the door just a bit and stared up at the sky above, and at the dark spots that blotted out some of the starsЧblots that were the grand homes of the Aboves floating overhead. Solander waited up there at that very moment.
Solander had said he thought he might be able to move them in as little as three days.
Wraith listened to the silence around him. The Warrens were always quiet at nightЧpeople went to bed soon after the sun set and got up just as it roseЧmindlessly obedient to the dictates of the gods, the lessons, the prayers, and the distribution of the Way-fare.
He had created Jess and SmokeЧhad stolen them away from their worlds of prayers and lessons and Way-fare because he had been lonely. A lost, lonely little boy, surrounded from the moment of his birth by people who could not see himЧwho fed him and changed him by rote and dictates, but who did not understand when he cried, and did not respond to his pleas for someone to play with him. Wraith was in his world but not a part of it, and he had discovered early that in his world, he could do almost anything without reprimand, censure, or even notice. He could skip lessons, could skip prayers, could go out the doors after darkЧand contrary to the endless droning teachings, the gods never struck him down for his blasphemy.
But he could not get his mother to see him. Nor his brothers, nor his sisters. He went to his daily lessons because he could think of nothing better to doЧand when he was there, he began to notice children whose eyes wandered from the teacher-screen. They did not speak to him when he spoke to them, but sometimes they looked his way for a momentЧand for the first time since his birth, he thought he might not have to spend his life alone.
So heТd led the children whose attention wandered away from lessons, only to find that they would not stay with him. They fought him stubbornly, returning to the nearest homes and prayer-lights as soon as they could break away from him, and going the next day to their lessons and the teacher-screen as if nothing had happened. They did not recognize him. They did not seem to remember anything. But when he spoke to them, they sometimes briefly glanced his way.
A girl heТd called Shina had been his first success. SheТd been closer to the surface all along than the rest of his classmates, and when he spoke to her one day, sheТd managed to make an actual sound. She had not made any words, but just the sound had been so exciting to Wraith that he had wept. He pulled her to his little hideout, and this time he locked the door with both of them inside. HeТd stolen food from beyond the gates, for even then he suspected that the food was part of what was wrong with everyone in the WarrensЧthat something about the Way-fare, the manna of the beneficent gods, held a deadly bite within it.
HeТd ventured out of the Warrens before, startled but unscathed by the flashing gate light, to find a wonderland beyond. He kept in his hideout a little stash of foods heТd found or stolenЧwonderful foods, with flavors and textures and colorsЧand when his still-nameless captive stopped trying to get out the locked door, heТd shared with her.
It had been a hard night. She would sleep, and in her sleep rise and try to leave, and Wraith had worried that she would hurt herself on the stairs or the crates. Finally heТd taken off his shirt and used it to tie her feet together.
When morning came, she wasа.а.а. herself. She looked around herЧthe first person in the Warrens that Wraith had ever seen do that except for himselfЧand then looked right at him.
And her first words were the first words each of his subsequent rescues had asked, in one way or another. УAre you one of the gods?Ф
He did not know what to say. HeТd once thought he might be one of the gods. So he told her his name was WraithЧthe Unseen One. That seemed right to him. And he told her she was Shina. The Mother Goddess. HeТd liked the name, and the image of lovely, dark-eyed Shina (one of the few benevolent gods of the WarrenersТ pantheon) speaking from the prayer-lights reminded Wraith of the girl who sat before him.
УAm I a god, then?Ф she had asked. And because she had not been struck down by the gods for the heresy of not praying the night prayers or going that morning to lessons, he told her that he thought she might be.
Three days later, never suspecting that the gate would do more than shine light on anyone who dared trespass it, he tried to take her out to see the city beyond the WarrensТ walls. HeТd been holding her hand when they started across, had been staring into her eyes with a delight and a joy that he had not imagined possible in his pale, lonely existence. And in the moment of crossing, the gates that could not touch him devoured her utterly. She did not have time to cry out. Did not have time to blink. He was staring into her eyes, and then staring into nothing. Nothing remained of her except the rags sheТd been wearing.
Shina. He tried not to think of her, but every time he lost another friend, he found himself staring into her lovely brown eyes in that single last instant they shared, and wondering what his life might have been like had she lived to share it with him.
That had been long ago, with its brutal lesson not lost on Wraith. Never again had he let anyone try to cross the gate. Never again had he tried to make one of his made friends into a true equal, a true partner.
Wraith, sitting in the doorway staring up at the sky, thought of the ones heТd rescued after. Red-haired, freckled Smoke. A boy heТd named Trev, lost to guards perhaps a year ago. Jess. His own older brotherЧthe first and last member of his true family that heТd tried to saveЧwho had won his way to awareness, had wept his thanks for the freedom of mind and body, and then had died in wracking, horrible pain because he was too old to escape the poisons of the Way-fare.
Those who lived had kept the names Wraith gave them because those names were gifts. To have a name at all was a gift. To be aware of names, to see the world, to do things by choice and understand that the choice existedЧall gifts. Of all of them, only Wraith had been born free. The rest of them had come to freedom through him, and they held him in a place of honor for that.