"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 04 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"How's Jakon?"
"He be fine, ser, a strong baby. He sleeps now." With a broad smile, the brunette turned and
headed down the stone steps of the tower.
Nylan stripped off his jacket and headed down the steps to the dimness of the fifth level,
where practicing was a contest not only against his partner, but against the gloom and uncertain
lighting. Ryba claimed that blades were as much feel as vision, and perhaps she was right. Nylan
wasn't certain he'd even seen half the men he'd killed with a blade over the past two years. He'd
certainly felt their deaths, suffused with white agony, but had he really seen them with his eyes?
That was the problem with Ryba. She was almost always right, but he hated her insistence that
power-or cold iron- was the only true solution to surviving in Candar.
"Here's the engineer," called Istril, holding Weryl and watching the sparring floor.
"Catch!" called Saryn.
Nylan's hand reached out almost automatically and caught the hardwood wand, flipping it again
and catching the hilt end. As he did, he absently wondered how he had gotten so proficient in
handling antique weapons of destruction-except he wasn't. He could defend himself against most,
and he had killed more than a few raiders and attackers-one at a time, since, after the first or
second killing, the white-infused waves of pain that flowed through him left him virtually
incapacitated.
He wasn't unique. All those who showed the innate ability to manipulate the order fields to
heal-all the silver-haired ones and Ayrlyn-had the same problem. Ryba couldn't heal, but she could
certainly kill.
Interestingly, Nylan reflected as he flexed the wand, trying to warm up briefly, all of those
who showed those healing traits had survived, even despite the battles they had been forced to
fight.
"Watch this," Saryn told the handful of recruits lining the chalked-off practice floor.
Nylan knew only about half the faces by name, and he wished they wouldn't watch. He glanced to
the corner where Daryn sat on a stool. The smith probably needed to craft some sort of prosthetic
device for the youth's foot, as he had for Relyn's lost hand.
"Ready, Nylan?"
"Not really." The smith lifted the hardwood wand, trying to let the feeling of unseen darkness
and order flow around him and through him.
Saryn lifted her wand, a shimmering laserlike force that probed and slashed through the gloom
of the fifth-level practice area.
As usual, Nylan felt awkward, barely parrying Saryn's initial attacks, giving ground and
retreating, trying to capture the sense of order that was his only salvation from bruises or, in
actual combat, death.
As he melded with the hardwood wand that mirrored a blade, he finally surrendered to the flow
of order and let the wand take its own course.
"... engineer's so good ... bet not even the Marshal could touch him . . ."
"... notice, though ... he never strikes ... all defense .. ."
But how long could he only defend? How long?


III


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