"Reichert, Mickey - Renshai 1 - Last Of The Renshai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reichert Mickey Zucker)

IS. Becoming Renshai 332

16. Pudar 363

17. Sterrane the Bear 384

18. Wizard's Work 405

19. Kinesthe 423

20. Ambush 436

21. King Gasir's Court 454

22. The Source of Strength 485

23. Corpa Leukenya 497

24. War to the Death 509

Part HI-THE GREAT WAR 535

25. Beneath the Banner of the Wolf 537

26. The Flagstone Tomb 553

27. Renshai Rage and the God of Wrath 568

28. The Eyes of the Dead 586

29. The Legend of Bearn 602

Epilogue 616

Appendix 626

MEETING ON THE WIZARD ISLE

Year: 11,194 (Year 23 of the Reign ofBuirane)

The Eastern Wizard, Shadimar, did not know how long he had sat with his elbows propped on the table in the Cardinal Wizards' Meeting Room and his bony chin cupped into his slender, wrinkled palms; but his hands had gone numb and long since ceased to register the cottony cascade of his beard between his fingers. The movements or stillness of his three colleagues had grown familiar beyond notice, and the only true mortal in the room, the bard Davrin, sat on the floor in his usual deferential silence, his mandolin cradled in his lap.

For the last seventy years, from the day Shadimar had become one of the four true mages, chronology had lost all meaning for him. At one time, a bird's flight across a meadow seemed to take days while, at another, an infant might come of age between Shadimar's breakfast and lunch. At first, these lapses had terrified him; a mad link in the chain of Eastern Wizards might harm the system that Odin the AUFather had created at the beginning of time and nurtured in the hundreds of centuries that followed. By his law, each of the four Cardinal Wizards selected his time to die in a glorious ceremony that passed his memories, and those of his predecessors, to his chosen/ successor. Thus, over time, the Wizards became stronger, more knowledgeable, and more powerful.

So far, that system had operated with reasonable precision. The original Wizards had been weak, essentially oracles and prophets. With Odin's guidance, they shaped and studied the world and its forces, found the best or most necessary courses of action, and created prophecies that their stronger successors would need to fulfill. Over eons, those visions had become clearer, and the abilities

2 Mickey Zucker Reichert

of the Wizards had grown to allow them to fulfill their own predictions. Now only the oldest and most unclear of the prophecies remained, spouted but little understood by the first Wizards, scrawled on cave walls, passed down in the legends of generations of mortals, or simply fun-neled through the memories of previous Wizards.