"Meredith Ann Pierce - Darkangel 2 - A Gathering of Gargoyles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Meredith Ann)

Aeriel sat on the low window seat. The stone was warm from the light of Solstar. That sun lay on the
far horizon, two hours from setting. Heaven above spanned black and star-pricked. The spires of the
city fanned out before her, beyond the palace walls. Men with plum-colored skin and long head veils,
women in full sheer trousers that gathered close at the ankles passed in the streets below. Aeriel listened
to the criers' long, wavering wails, calling the people to prayer.
Dusk wind rose, bringing the scent of myrrh. The city had always smelled of that to her, ever since the
first dayтАФeven the dust blowing in off the Sea. They called their city Esternesse, though in the far place
she had come from, Aeriel had known of it as Esternesse.
Was it only three daymonths ago that she had come? Three leisurely passes of Solstar overhead, two
long fortnights of dark. The fair-skinned girl closed her eyes and tried to picture again the great throw
she and Irrylath had woven from the feathers of a darkangel.
They had taken that throw and spread it to the winds. Like a sail, it had borne them away over the white
plain of Avaric. And the scream. She remembered the scream of the White Witch sounding far and
shrill from the distance behind, turning the feathers of their sail from night-dark to white as Aeriel and

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the young prince sailed out of her grasp. The memory of it made her shudder still.
They had drifted east, she and Irrylath, over the Sea-of-Dust. High above that dryland Sea, they had
watched dust whales spouting and sounding hugely below, seabirds like specks bathing and pouting in
the fine, rolling powderтАФtill they saw the city upon the far shore of the Sea: Esternesse. All its
buildings of white stone.
Horns sounded from the watchtowers as the wind swept them near, lifted them high over the city gates
and dropped them gently within the main square. Palace guard and city guard came at a run. Strangely
garbed women, men with almond-shaped eyes pressed close.
The Lady came toward them from the palace. She was tall, and wore a robe of grey satin. The turban
upon her head was silk. Aeriel could not see her hair, but her lashes were the color of flax-corn fiber.
Her eyes were violet.
"Are you Syllva?" said Aeriel, clad still in her wedding sari. She put her hands together and bowed as
she had been taught to do in the syndic's houseтАФso long ago. "The queen of Avaric?"
The turbaned Lady nodded. "I am she, that was the king's wife in Avaric, a score of years and more ago.
But now I am Lady again in Esternesse. What are you, that have fared all this way across the Mare?"
"I am Aeriel," the girl replied, "and I have come from Avaric to bring you back your son."
Irrylath stood close to her, not touching, but she felt his hold upon the throw. Wind tugged at the sail as
it settled behind them. He said nothing. The Lady's eyes had not left Aeriel.
"My son in Avaric fell into a desert lake and drowned."
Aeriel shook her head. "Not drowned. That was a lie his nurse told you." Her skin grew cold at the
thought of Dirna: she who had been the young prince's nurse in AvaricтАФthen was later sold into
Terrain, became a servant in the syndic's house, where Aeriel had known her. The Terrainean girl
turned her gaze back to Syllva again. "Not drowned. In the desert, your son's nurse, Dirna, gave him up
to the lorelei, a water witch who kept him ten years prisoner beneath the lake, thenтАж"
She faltered there. What could she say? Lady, your son has been a darkangel. The White Witch of the
Mere steals children to make them her icari: pale bloodless creatures with a dozen dark wings тАФthen
sends them out to prey upon the world. I undid that sorcery on him, made your son mortal again, but in