"Mickey Zucker Reichert - Renshai 02 - The Western Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichert Mickey Zucker)

The Golden Prince of Demons.



Clearly, that promised age of change had come. Trilless knew a tense expectancy that seemed to follow
her, an inescapable current that suffused the world and all the creatures in it. Some of the tenets had
already come to pass. Goaded by Carcophan, who was the current Southern Wizard, King Siderin of
the Eastlands had launched the Great War against the mixed races of the Westlands.



Trilless' brow knit. A scowl formed naturally on her creased features at the thought of Carcophan, her
evil opposite. Law and propriety had barred her from directly observing or taking part in this war. But,
through magic, she had glimpsed those parts which involved Northmen. Only one of the eighteen
Northern tribes had chosen to aid the Westerners in the War; the Vikerians had gone, allied to the Town
of Santagithi. Their second-in-command, a lieutenant called Valr Kirin, showed promise as a warrior and
as a possible champion of goodness. But, despite his competence, the hero of the Great War was not
Kirin "The Slayer."



Trilless' thoughts flowed naturally to the Renshai who had earned the title "Golden Prince of Demons,"
Colbey Calistinsson. She saw his cold blue-gray eyes in a hard face scarcely beginning to show age. He
kept his mixed gold and white locks hacked short, a style that looked out of place amid the other
Northmen's war braids. Though relatively small, he moved with a strength and agility she had never seen
matched in any warrior or acrobat. At sixty-five, Colbey was older than any Renshai in history, except
for the ancient Episte who had died a decade and a half ago. Enamored with war, Renshai rarely lived
through their thirties, and inbreeding had fostered a racial feature that made them seem younger than their
actual ages. This, combined with a custom of naming infants for brave warriors slain in battle, had given
rise to rumors that Renshai drank blood to remain eternally young.



Trilless sighed, missing the connection between Colbey and the doom suggested by the first Northern
Sorceress' forecast. So far, the Renshai's actions fell well within the tenets of Northern honor. She found
him as predictable as any of her own followers, though he had chosen neutrality over goodness. She
doubted any mortal could challenge the Cardinal Wizards, let alone begin the Ragnarok, the great war
destined to destroy the gods. Still, the prophecy implied that he would have some connection to the
primordial chaos that Odin had banished to create the world.



Below Trilless, the ocean remained gray and still. The presences of her predecessors shifted fretfully,
reminding her that the poem never stated that Colbey would directly cause the Wizards' broken vows,
the change, or the rise of chaos. Yet just the linking of his name with those events made their imminence
loom. How many more years can a sixty-five-year-old mortal have? Trilless answered her own question.
At most, a decade. To a sorceress nearly five centuries old, it seemed like an eye blink.