"Recluce - 07 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

аа He stood up from the rocking chair and eased Dyliess to his shoulder
for a moment, patting her back. Then he half-lowered her and kissed her
cheek before easing her into Antyl's arms.
аа "How's Jakon?"
аа "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.
аа 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?
аа 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.
аа "Here's the engineer," called Istril, holding Weryl and watching the
sparring floor.
аа "Catch!" called Saryn.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа "Watch this," Saryn told the handful of recruits lining the
chalked-off practice floor.
аа 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.
аа "Ready, Nylan?"
аа "Not really." The smith lifted the hardwood wand, trying to let the
feeling of unseen darkness and order flow around him and through him.
аа Saryn lifted her wand, a shimmering laserlike force that probed and
slashed through the gloom of the fifth-level practice area.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа "... engineer's so good ... bet not even the Marshal could touch him .