"McKillip,.Patricia.A.-.Qrmh.2.-.Heir.Of.Sea.And.Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

IN SPRING, THREE THINGS CAME INVARIABLY TO

the house of the King of An: the year's first
shipment of Herun wine, the lords of the Three
Portions for the spring council, and an argument

The spring of the year following the strange dis-
appearance of the Prince of Hed, who had, with the
High One's harpist, vanished like a mist in Isig
Pass, the great house with its seven gates and seven
white towers seemed to be cracking like a seed pod
out of a long, bitter winter of silence and grief. The
season dusted the air with green, set patterns of
light like inlay on the cold stone floors, and roused
restlessness like sap in the deep heart of An, until
Raederie of An, standing in Cyone's garden, which
no one had entered for the six months since her
death, felt that even the dead of An, their bones
plaited with grass root, must be drumming their
fingers in their graves.

She stirred after a while, left the tangle of weeds
and withered things that had not survived the win-
ter, and went back into the King's hall, whose doors
were flung wide to the light. Servants under the eye
of Mathom's steward, were shaking the folds out of

Heir of Sea and Fire

the lords' banners, hanging them precariously from
the high beams. The lords were due any day, and
the house was in a turmoil preparing to receive
them. Already their gifts had been arriving for her:

a milk-white falcon bred in the wild peaks of Os-
terland from the Lord of Hel; a brooch like a gold
wafer from Map Hwillion, who was too poor to
afford such things; a flute of polished wood inlaid
with silver, which bore no name, and worried Rae-
derle, since whoever had sent it had known what
she would love. She watched the banner of Hel
unrolling, the ancient boar's head with tusks like
black moons on an oak-green field; it rose jerkily
on its hangings to survey the broad hall out of its
small fiery eyes. She gazed back at it, her arms
folded, then turned suddenly and went to find her

father.

She found him in his chambers arguing with his