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

Her father trained gladiators, Alara remembered suddenly. There was that
short memory of the duel in the arena, but there were probably more. She'd
have to go look--

Serina half fell into the water, hardly recognizing it for what it was until her
arms went under the surface. She plunged her face into the blessed coolness,
drinking until she could hold no more, crying tears of relief at the feel of the
cold water down her throat, and on the parched and burned skin of her arms
and face.

When she could no longer drink another drop, she lay beside the pool, her
arms trailing into the water, too weak to move. Too weak even to think.

She was still so hot--

The sun overhead was like the bright lights of the arena, too bright to look at
directly...

Today the Lord was garbed in a pure sapphire-blue, and his eyes reflected
some of that blue in their depths. Serina thought he was even handsomer than
he had been the first time she saw him. "In a very real sense," Dyran said
lazily, as he strolled with his hands clasped behind his back, inspecting
Jared's latest crop of duelists, "I owe something of my prosperity to you."
The men were arranged in a neat line before him, wearing their special
leather armor, each set made to facilitate his--or her, there were a few
women in the group--weapon's specialty. They stood at parade rest, like so
many sinister statues, helms covering their faces so that only the occasional
glitter of an eye showed that they lived.

Serina peered out from under the cover of an old tarpaulin flung over a pile
of broken armor heaped atop one of the storage closets. She'd learned how to
climb up here when she was five or six; at nine now, she barely fit. A few
more inches, and she wouldn't be able to squeeze in behind the pile anymore.
That meant she probably wouldn't be able to steal any further glimpses of the
training, so she had resolved to take full advantage of every opportunity that
came along now.
"Thank you, my lord," Jared replied expressionlessly. "But it was you, my
lord, who gave me the training, and saw to it that I was well matched. It was
you who placed me in charge of training the others. I had only the raw
ability. You saw to its honing, and made use of it."

"True, true... still, you're a remarkable beast, Jared. Over a hundred duels,
and never a loss." Dyran stepped back and regarded his slave with a critical
eye, his head tilted a little to one side. "I daresay you could still take any one
of these youngsters, and win. Would you care to try? A real duel, I mean, not
just a practice."

Serina knew her father well enough to know that Dyran's "offer" shook him
to the bone. A "real" duel--that meant to the death. Jared, against one of the