"Andre Norton & Lackey, Mercedes - Elvenbane 1 -The Elvenbane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

scapegoat, he tended to create one.

The library was the last place any human wanted to be stationed right now.
Alara noted from her vantage point that it was a remarkably unlikely setting
for violence, entirely furnished in white and silver. The house colors were
present even in the private quarters; Alara wondered at Rathekrel's incredible
Clan-pride. But these were not the austere surroundings he had placed his
"guest" among; the library was a comfortable place, with soft white curtains
shrouding all the harsh angles, a white carpet so dense that even heavy-
footed humans made no sound to disturb the silence, and formless seats that
embraced the user, seats that could have been clouds come to earth. The desk
was another such construction, with its top planed off to a glossy, flat
surface. Lord Rathekrel contemplated that surface with his narrow face
creased with frown lines, and his shoulders tensed.

Alara would have liked to try touching his thoughts, but decided to be very
cautious about doing so. She did not want to chance the elven lord's detection
of someone probing his mind. She doubted that he would suspect her, but
there was no point in taking that kind of risk.

Most especially now, when he was about to invoke magic, and would be
most sensitive to a probe. She decided to wait until his concentration was so
occupied that he would be unlikely to notice anything else.

So she waited patiently, one more "invisible" slave among the rest. Finally
he waved his hand over the desk, and a bottomless black rectangle appeared
in the surface before him, as the substance of the desk seemed to dissolve
away, fading, rather than melting. He placed his hands, palms down, on
either side of the newly formed space.

The elven mage stared at the place for a moment, then let out his breath in a
hiss.

His fingers flexed, and blue sparks crackled out from them to slither across
the surface of the desk. Some of the humans shuffled their feet uneasily, and
one youngster on the end looked to Alara as if he would very much like to
run away. The sparks danced and crawled for some few moments, finally
consolidating in the area of the rectangle, until that empty space between
Rathekrel's flattened palms flared to life in a glowing rectangle.

A voice called, seemingly out of nowhere. The humans started, and one
looked about covertly for the speaker.

"Lord Rathekrel?"

The Lord shifted his position to look down upon his creation, and Alara
could not see anything of the rectangle itself, only the light coming from it,
reflecting oddly upwards into the elf-lord's face. Now was the time to
insinuate that little probe.