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

plump, and only a few years younger than Gorynel Desse as far as Collan could judge. She
ushered them through a short hallway to the kitchen, where steaming stew and thick slices of
crusty bread smeared with soft cheese waited. Collan pounced. Folded road or not, it had
been a long walk.

"The itinerant herbalist again?" Lady Lilen inquired teasingly of the Mage, twitching his robe
with dainty, well-kept fingers. "Gorsha, dearest, you're so much more impressive as the
Unnamed Lady's Questing Father!"

"Which requires baggage suitable to a Blooded's comforts, and I travel fast and light these
days. Is that a Cantrashir red I smell mulling on the hearth?"

They conferred quietly beside the fire, sipping hot spiced wine. Col ignored them for the most
part, seated on a tall stool at the butcher block, devouring the stew. He was pleasantly drowsy
by the time he finished, but now that his belly wasn't rumbling he was curious enough to
look and listen again.

Copper pots and iron skillets hung from hooks on the hearth's stone hood and around the
massive stove. The smoke-stained yellow bricks of the oven were accented by inset blue and
green tiles, which repeated above the two sinks and across the spotless floor. This was a nice
kitchen. Collan felt strangely safe here, and attributed it to the lack of a treadmill near the
hearth.

"He can't stay," he heard Lady Lilen say, and the sensation of security vanished. "I would've
sent you a message if I'd known where you wereтАФand if you'd given me a little more time.
Yes, I know these things are always sudden, but you have a positive gift for last-instant
arrangements, Gorsha!"

"What's the trouble?"

"What it always is these days. Ostinhold isn't living up to Scraller's expectations. His agents
have been by almost every day for a week, going over my account books. I keep telling them
it's impossible to produce the herds he envisions, but he seems to think galazhi breedтАФ"

"тАФlike Ostins!" the old man teased, and Lady Lilen blushed. "Sorry, my lovely, but you
walked right into that one! I understand your difficulty with Scraller, but what better place
for the boy than in a house already being investigated? Hide in plain sight is a Mage
Guardian's bestтАФ"

"You don't understand. Scraller himself is coming tomorrow. And I've learned that Anniyas is
encouraging him."

Collan slid off the stool.

"Stay where you are," said the Mage without looking at him.

"You are crazy!" he burst out. "I'm getting out of here! Now! Tonight!"

Desse relaxed back in his chair. "Go right ahead."