"Tamora Pierce - Protector Of The Small 4 - Lady Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Tamora)

"I need more information," Kel murmured to Jump as she mucked out Hoshi's stall. "And soon, before
the king orders us out with the army. I certainly can't tell the king I won't go. He'll want to know why,
and I can't talk about what happened during my Ordeal."
Jump whuffed softly in understanding.
Her horses tended, Kel reported to the palace library. There, she and the other knights who were her
year-mates (young men who had begun their page studies when she had) practiced the Scanran tongue.
Many Scanrans spoke Common, the language used in all the Eastern Lands between the Inland Sea and
the Roof of the World, but the study of Scanran would help those who fought them to read their
messages and interpret private conversations.
After lessons Kel spent her time as best she could. She cared for her weapons and armour, worked
on her sword and staff skills in one of the practice courtyards, ate supper with her friends, and finally
read in her room. When the watch cried the time at the hour after midnight, she closed her book and left
her room, with Jump at her heels.
The palace halls were deserted. Wall torches in iron cressets burned low. Kel did not see another soul.
In normal times the nobility would be at parties; not this year. The coming war dictated their hours now.
They retired before midnight after evenings spent figuring what goods and labour they could spare for the
coming bloody summer. Even the servants, always the last to sleep, were abed. It was like walking in a
dream through an empty palace. Kel shivered and grabbed a torch from the wall as she passed the Hall
of Crowns.
It was a good idea. No lights burned in the corridor that led to her destination. The Chapel of the
Ordeal was used only at Midwinter, when squires took their final step to a shield. Now it was shut and
ignored. Still, the Chapel's door was never locked. Kel shut it once she and Jump were inside. There was
no need to post a guard: over the centuries, thieves and anyone else whose motives were questionable
had been found outside the Chapel door, reduced to dried flesh and bone by the Chamber's
immeasurable power.
Once a year during her term as a squire, Kel had visited the Chamber to try her will against it. On
those visits she had confined her encounter with it to touching the door.
To converse with the thing, she suspected that she had to go all the way inside once again.
Kel set her torch in a cresset near the altar. Its flickering light danced over the room: benches, the plain
stone floor, the altar with its gold candlesticks and doth, and the large gold sun disc, the symbol of the
god Mithros. To the right of the disc was the iron door to the Chamber of the Ordeal.
For a moment Kel could not make her legs go forward. She had never had a painless experience from
the Chamber. In the grip of its power she had lived through the death of loved ones, been crippled and
useless, and been forced to stand by as horrors unfolded.
"This is crazy," she told Jump. The dog wagged his tail, making a soft thwapping noise that seemed
loud in the silent Chapel.
"You wait here," Kel said. She ordered her body to move. It obeyed: she had spent years shaping it to
her will. She stepped up to the iron door. It swung back noiselessly into a small, dark room with no
windows or furnishings of any kind.
Kel trembled, cold to the bone with fear. At last she walked into the Chamber. The door closed,
leaving her in complete darkness.
Suddenly she stood on a flat, bare plain without a tree, stream, or animal to be seen. It was all
bare earth, with no grass or stones to interrupt the boring view.
"What is this place?" she asked aloud. Squires were forbidden to speak during the Ordeal, but
surely this was different. In an odd way, this was more like a social visit than an Ordeal. "Do you
live here?"
It is as close as your human mind can perceive it. The Chamber's ghost-like voice always sounded
in Kel's head, not her ears.
Kel thrust her hands into her pockets. "I don't see why you haven't done something with it," she
informed the Chamber. "No furnishings, no trees or birdsтАж If you're going to bring people here,