"Tamora Pierce - Protector Of The Small 3 - Squire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Tamora)

dog's claws on the stone floor.
They made an interesting pair. The fourteen-year-old girl was big for her age, five feet nine inches tall,
and dressed informally in breeches and shirt. Both were a dark green that emphasized the same color in
her green-hazel eyes. Her dark boots were comfortable, not fashionable. On her belt hung a pouch and a
black-hilted dagger in a plain black sheath. Her brown hair was cut to earlobe length. It framed a tanned
face dusted with freckles across a delicate nose. Her mouth was full and decided.
The dog, known as Jump, was barrel-chested, with slightly bowed forelegs. His small, triangular eyes
were set deep in a head shaped like a heavy chisel. He was mostly white, but black splotches covered
the end of his nose, his lone whole ear, and his rump; his tail plainly had been broken twice. He looked
like a battered foot soldier to Kel's young squire, and he had proved his combat skills often.
At the end of the hall stood a pair of wooden doors carved with a sun, the symbol of Mithros, god of
law and war. They were ancient, the surfaces around the sun curved deep after centuries of polishing.
Their handles were crude iron, as coarse as the fittings on a barn door.
Kel stopped. Of the pages who had just passed the great examinations to become squires, she was the
only one who had not come here before. Pages never came to this hall. Legend held that pages who
visited the Chapel of the Ordeal never became squires: they were disgraced or killed. But once they were
squires, the temptation to see the place where they would be tested on their fitness for knighthood was
irresistible.
Kel reached for the handle and opened one door just enough to admit her and Jump. There were
benches placed on either side of the room from the door to the altar. Kel slid onto one, glad to give her
wobbly knees a rest. Jump sat in the aisle beside her.
After her heart calmed, Kel inspected her surroundings. This chapel, focus of so many longings, was
plain. The floor was gray stone flags; the benches were polished wood without ornament. Windows set
high in the walls on either side were as stark as the room itself.
Ahead was the altar. Here, at least, was decoration: gold candlesticks and an altar cloth that looked
like gold chain mail. The sun disk on the wall behind it was also gold. Against the gray stone, the dark
benches, and the wrought-iron cressets on the walls, the gold looked tawdry.
The iron door to the right of the sun disk drew Kel's eyes. There was the Chamber of the Ordeal.
Generations of squires had entered it to experience something. None told what they saw; they were
forbidden to speak of it. Whatever it was, it usually let squires return to the chapel to be knighted.
Some who entered the Chamber failed. A year-mate of Kel's brother Anders had died three weeks
after his Ordeal without ever speaking. Two years after that a squire from Fief Yanholm left the
Chamber, refused his shield, and fled, never to be seen again. At Midwinter in 453, months before the
Immortals War broke out, a squire went mad there. Five months later he escaped his family and
drowned himself.
"The Chamber is like a cutter of gemstones," Anders had told Kel once. "It looks for your flaws and
hammers them, till you crack open. And that's all I - or anyone - will say about it."
The iron door seemed almost separate from the wall, more real than its surroundings. Kel got to her
feet, hesitated, then went to it. Standing before the door, she felt a cold draft.
Kel wet suddenly dry lips with her tongue. Jump whined. "I know what I'm doing," she told her dog
without conviction, and set her palm on the door.

She sat at a desk, stacks of parchment on either side. Her hands sharpened a goose quill - with
a penknife. Splotches of ink stained her fingers. Even her sleeves were spotted with ink.
"There you are, squire."
Kel looked up. Before her stood Sir Gareth the Younger, King Jonathan's friend and adviser.
Like Kel's, his hands and sleeves were ink-stained. "I need you to find these." He passed a slate to
Kel, who took it, her throat tight with misery. "Before you finish up today, please. They should be
in section eighty-eight." He pointed to the far end of the room. She saw shelves, all stretching
from floor to ceiling, all stuffed with books, scrolls, and documents.