"Modesitt, L E - Recluce 10 - Magi'i Of Cyador" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"You did just the right thing in charging them toward us," Zandrey continues. "Too bad about the peasant holders, but if we'd have charged before you got down the hill, most of the raiders would have escaped."
The wind whines, and the chill drops around Lorn. He glances up to see that, sometime during the fighting, the sun has dropped behind the hills to the west, and the cold of winter in the Grass Hills had returned.
"We'll overnight here," Zandrey says. "Barn's big enough for the men, and the dwelling for us and the squad leaders."
Lorn nods, unwilling to speak for the moment, his thoughts on the dark-haired, dead herder girl not that much younger than his own sister Myryan... and the charge that Zandrey had never considered making.
XXVI
In the dimness of his cold quarters, under the flame of a single lamp, Lorn sits on the edge of the narrow bed, holding a green-silvered book, marvelling at the clarity of the angled characters that date back to the founders. The cover remains pristine, unmarked, its silver shifting from one faint shade of green to another as he turns it in his hands. With all he has had to learn, and the tiredness that comes from that and seemingly endless riding, he has read little. He looks at the back cover, but it too is untouched by time.
Yet the slim volume is missing two pages, and Lorn suspects that one would have been a title page and the other would have born the name of the writer, for there are no inscriptions anywhere within it that say when the book was written or for what purpose or by whom. There are no numbers, no strange cursives or codes. There are just the poems, and no one in Cyad writes poems, not publicly, not that Lorn knows. And no one has in generations, at least not poems shared beyond a family or a lover, and not that there is any restriction on writing them. It is just not done.
His lips curl. Just as it is not written that a student mage who is not properly reverential shall not become a full mage.
He fingers the pages of the book again. He can scarcely see where the cuts had been made to remove the pages, and the material of each page seems stronger than shimmercloth. No knife he knows would cut such tough material so cleanly. But the pages have been removed.
He opens the volume, almost at random. He has promised to read it, every page. He knows Ryalth must have had a reason, a reason well beyond sentiment, for though she has feelings, those emotions will not betray her.
He reads the words on the page before him once. Somehow, unspoken, they are not satisfactory. He murmurs them softly as he reads them again.

Although the old lands are in my heart,
in towers that anchored life with certain art,
in eyes that will not again see bold
the hills of Angloria or surf at Winterhold,
I greet the coming evening, and the night,
proud purple from the strange and setting sun
and the towered ragged course that I have run,
towers yet that hold the chaos of life,
and struggle with order's unending strife,
for endless may they hold our light
against the long and coming night.

Worlds change, I'm told,
mirror silver to heavy gold,
and the new becomes the old,
with the way the story's told.

Lorn shakes his head. The words, or most of them, are familiar, but hint at a meaning beyond the obvious. Yet Ryalth had asked a question when she had given him the book. What were the Firstborn like?
Will the volume in his hands tell Lorn that?
The lancer undercaptain slowly closes the ancient yet ageless volume. He will read more. In time. He has years at Isahl. Years.


XXVII

Despite the clear green-blue sky, and a bright sun nearly at its noon zenith, the winter wind whistles out of the northeast, chilling Lorn's cheeks and ears, driving through the light earflaps on his white winter garrison cap. A faint dusting of snow lies scattered on bare patches of ground beyond the shoulder of the road and on the brown grass that stretches toward the lonely single hut and barn to the south of the road that is less than a narrow cart track.
The hoofs of the lancers' mounts clunk faintly on the frozen clay of the road that stretches northeast past the single stead toward a gap between two hills. Beyond those hills, according to Nytral and the maps, lies another valley, one where three families raise black-wooled sheep and some few field crops.
Using his chaos senses, Lorn practices listening to the comments of the lancers in the first company behind him.
"...winter patrols..."
"...lot of riding... last eightday... first raiders all winter..."
"...probably the last, too..."
"...like that last winter... two bunches all winter... turned and rode away."
"...let the undercaptain hear that... or the sub-majer... be riding every patrol till you hit the Steps."
"...lancers don't hit the Steps to Paradise... get buried under 'em... Drext... even the officers."
"Specially the officers." A low laugh follows.
Nytral, riding beside Lorn for the moment, turns in the saddle, and the murmurs die away. The only sounds are the low whistle of the wind, the whuffing of mounts, and the dull clumping of hoofs on the frozen road.
Lorn smiles at Nytral. "Officers are the ones who send them out on winter patrols."
"You hear more than most officers, ser. That'd not be always good."
"So long as I know what they think, and so long as I listen to you and my own judgment, knowing what they think is better than not knowing."