"Katya Reimann - Tielmaran 01 - Wind from a Foreign Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reimann Katya)

searching for the key to destroy Tielmark's PrinceтАФtwo women and it might as well
have been ten. If I had truly made a mistake in bringing you here, you would have
followed them into madness.
"But you did not break. You could not break. You think your flighty Goddess
Twins saved you? They didn't need to. Pure gold does not tarnish, pure steel does
not shatter. Prophecy's players do not descend to madness before their true hour of
testing."
"What are you saying?"
"Twice Fair." The words hung in the air like long notes, heavy with magic. "This
broken spell has proved you are the woman of prophecy who is Twice Fair. Did
you ever hear of this particular prophecy, Mervion Blas? Did you ever hear the
secret, and know it would spell Tielmark's doom?"
"I don't even know why you have brought me here." Mervion's whisper was
underlain with a new note of fear. "What could I know of your precious prophecy?"
"You knew the prophecy's keeper," the Chancellor said, his voice deceptively
mild. "And now I know why he fought so hard to protect his secret!"
"Excellency," Issachar interrupted. As he filled and lit the lamp, his temper had
cooled. Now his voice had the silky purr of a cat, and something in it quelled even
the Chancellor's eagerness. "Tell the girl the whole of the prophecy if you
likeтАФindeed the whole of Tielmark's history if you like. But the prophecy's keeper?
Leave that unspoken."
Anisia shivered. Leave it all unspoken, she thought, and let us go home.
The Chancellor gave his dark servant a disdainful look. "You did not even think
that this girl would be the one," he said. "Too common to be uncommon, you said."
Lord Dan shrugged. He prodded Mervion with his foot, forcing her to look into
his eyes.
"Tielmark's Prince is due to be married in three weeks' time," the dark lord told
her, "on Prince's Night, the holiest festival of Tielmark's calendar. The night when
Empire's traitor, the Fifth Imperial Prince, Clarin, consorted with the gods to make
his land a free principality. He made three vows to the gods that night. Two of those
vows he kept himself. The third his heirs must renew with their own flesh, for Clarin
pledged that his line would perpetually renew itself in a mystic marriage to Tielmark's
common blood.
"Twice Fair, on the sixth run's closing night may bear,
 A Bloody Fruit, to bride the Prince to ruin."
Issachar paused. The blood was still seeping from the opened scars on his
cheeks. He brushed at it impatiently. "This Prince's Night marks three hundred years
of Tielmark's freedom, and the closing of the Great Twins' sixth cycle of rule. Twice
FairтАФ" He touched a small circle of blood onto Mervion's ash-covered forehead.
"You will be the vessel that breaks your own goddesses' power in this land."
He touched his throat, a prayer sign. There was a flare of magic, blinding bright.
When Anisia could look again, Issachar had stood back from her marriage-sister.
His jagged facial scars had stopped bleeding. The spot of blood on Mervion's
forehead had vanished.
"You were right about this one, Excellency," the dark lord said. "And I was
wrong. This girl must be the one Twice Fair. But it is only half the riddle solved.
Now we must discover why you were right."
For the first time since the sorcery had commenced, Mervion looked across to
Anisia and met her eyes. The look on Mervion's face was agony and fear combined.
The Chancellor may not have known the answer to this riddle.