"Melanie Rawn - Exiles 1 - The Ruins of Ambrai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

for yourself."

"There aren't any more Mages. They all died at Ambrai."

"Just because Avira Anniyas says so?" He snorted. "Walk your shoes a little faster, please. I
don't have all night and escapes are tricky at best."

Collan balked, planting his shoes firmly on the stone floor. A slave had tried to escape last
autumn. His head, carefully preserved in a glass jar, still adorned the entrance to Quarters.

The Mage stopped and swung around, white hair and black cloak swirling. "To address your
self-evident objections in orderтАФI spelled Scraller just now. He won't wake up until Seventh
tomorrow. Secondly, we won't be caught unless you persist in your present imitation of a
potted plum tree. Thirdly, my reason for doing this is irrelevant at the moment, but your
reason for accompanying me is quite urgent. An ongoing argument between Taguare the
Bookmaster and Flornat the Slavemaster was resolved this morning. The latter won. You are
officially thirteen years old, and if you want to get any older with all parts intact, hurry up."

Collan approached, still suspicious but with a cold knot tightening in his stomach. "What
d'you mean?"

"I mean," said Gorynel Desse, "that tomorrow you're scheduled for the gelder's knife to
preserve that charming voice of yours, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a
eunuch, move !"

Col moved.

A little over an hour later they were indeed at the outskirts of Combel, taken there by their
own feet and Gorynel Desse's magic.

"It's a difficult spell," the old man said as they tramped through the dark, moonless night.
"Curiously, it won't work on horses. Something about them absolutely refuses to believe that
a mile isn't really a mile. They're very stupid or very clever, I can't decide which. Folding isn't
something just any Mage can do, either, and it's doubly difficult on top of Invisibility. But it
so happens that IтАФ"

"I thought you said there was a spell of silence, too."

"Oh, I got rid of that one at the bottom of all those tedious steps. Now, what was I saying
before you so rudely interrupted? Ah, yes. I was bragging about my Folding spell. A
fortunate thing I'm so good at it, too, for it's saved my moderately useful life several times."
"How?" Collan asked.

"Stories best saved for another occasion. As for the spellтАж there's a simpler version whereby a
Mage compresses objects for easy transportтАФor concealment. It's something like folding a
napkin. This particular application takes more power and concentration. I'm Folding pieces of
land, you see."

Oddly enough, Collan did. Sort of. "So one step equals two or three?"