"Jennifer Roberson - CotC 4 - The House of Homana" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberson Jennifer)

not now; no warrior in all the clans had ever reached his
eighteenth birthday without receiving his lir. Nor, for
that matter, his seventeenth. And so I tried to content
myself with my rank and titleтАФno small things, to the
Homanan way of thinkingтАФand the knowledge that for
all I lacked a fir, I was still Cheysuli. No one could deny
the Old Blood ran in my veins. No one. Not even the
shar tahl^ who spoke of rituals and traditions very care-
fully indeed when he spoke of them to me, becauseтАФfor
all 1 lacked a lirтАФ1 still claimed the proper line of de-
scent. And that line would put me on roe Lion Throne of
Homana the day my rather died.

That, at least, was something my brother could not lay
claim toтАФnot that he would wish to. Being bastard-bom of
my father's Cheysuli meijhaтАФlight woman, in HomananтАФ
attached no stigma to him in the clans. Cheysuli do not

Slace such importance on legitimacy; in the clans, the
irth of another Cheysuli is all that counts, but as far as
the Homanans were concerned, Donal's eldest son was
tolerated among the Homanan aristocracy only because
he was the son of the Mujhar.

And so lan, as much as myself, knew what it was to
lack absolute acceptance. It was, I suppose, his own part
of the discordant harmony in an otherwise pleasing mel-
ody. It only manifested itself for a different reason-

"NiallтАФ?" lan rose with the habitual grace I tried to
emulate and could not; I am too tall, too heavy, I lack
the total ease of movement born in so many Cheysuli.
"What is it?"

I thought I had learned to mask my face, even to lan.
It served no purpose to tell him what torture it was to see
my brother with his fir, or my father with his. Most of the
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time it remained a dull ache, and bearable, as a sore
tooth is bearable so long as it does not turn rotten in the
jaw. But occasionally the tooth throbs, sending pain of
unbearable intensity through my mind; my mask had
slipped, and lan bad seen the face I wore behind it.