"Melanie Rawn - Dragon Star 3 - Skybowl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

"Dry clothes, too."
"Good. You lie down and sleep. I'll tend the Fire."
One moment Evarin's little blaze faded, and the next Andry called Fire to the same spot. The
exchange was made smoothly; at least the injury to his head hadn't played foul with his gifts. The
physician curled himself into another blanket and was asleep between one breath and the next.
Andry changed clothes, keeping the blanket like a shawl over his shoulders. It was bitterly cold,
but his need for warmth had more to do with his guts than his skin.
"One will fall...."
But which? Oh, Goddess, which one?
He took hard bread and cheese from his saddlebags and went to the shelter doorway. He had no sense
of time; it might have been anywhere from just after dusk to just before dawn. There must have
been a clear sky earlier, or Evarin wouldn't have been able to go looking for Alasen, but now only
faint, milky luminescence showed where the moons lurked behind the clouds. The unusable light
mocked him.
Which would fall?
Not Radzyn. She said he had bought it with his belief. He remembered his dreams of death and
destruction. She had shown him what might happen, and he had believed.
Tiglath, then? Evarin, on their long ride before the disaster of today, had told him all he knew
of events. The Vellant'im had sailed to Tiglath, attacked, been repulsed, and departed. Tallain
had died defending his castle, but the castle still stood. They had tried to take it once. They
had failed. There was no reason to think they might attempt it again.
Not so with Goddess Keep. Seven ships were in Brochwell Bay even now. But Torien and the other
devr'im Knew how to protect themselves. Prince Elsen of Grib was nding south with troops in answer
to Torien's call for aid. The prince's sister Norian was on her way from Dragon's Rest with her
husband, Edrel of River Ussh. They would provide more traditional defense than the spells used by
the devr'im. With sudden wryness, he reminded himself that Jayachin was there, tooтАФand nothing
would prevent her from doing everything she could to uphold her own safety and her new position as
unofficial athri of the refugees out-Mde the walls.
No, it would not be Goddess Keep.
Castle Crag was too remote for the Vellant'im to bother


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*ith. But not, he realized with a start, for Chiana. It had always been her goal to rule there.
Onee she realized that no Vellanti or sorcerous help would be coming to her at Rezeld Manor, she
might decide to fulfill her lifelong ambition. Ostvel was at Swalekeep; Alasen was at Feruche; all
their troops and the levies from the surrounding Veresch were with one or the other. There was no
one left to defend Castle Crag. Would it be the one to fall?
Perhaps Swalekeep. No, the Vellant'im had tried once there, too, and failed. There was no military
profit in the place, anyway.
That brought him to think of Balarat, up in Firon and equally irrelevant in terms of securing the
continentтАФwhich
* as obviously not the invaders' intention to begin with. Politically, however, the place
presented dangers. Yarin of Snowcoves occupied the castle and held in custody the rightful
prince's young heir. Regaining Balarat would present a pretty problem. But if it fell to Prince
Lark, would that not be returning it to its rightful owner? This hardly constituted the kind of
"fall" he felt sure the Goddess had meant.
Lastly, there was Skybowl. Something inside him quickened. A Desert castle. The Vellant'im had