"Nancy Varian - Berberick - Dalamar the Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varian Nancy)

expected in the kitchen. There are floor tiles in the oven room needing
repair." He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a cruel imitation of a
smile. "Don't you have some pretty little spell you can work on them? To keep
your hand in, as it were?"
Laughing, Eflid left the room, not closing the door behind. Alone, Dalamar
looked around at his new quarters. Motes sparkled, golden bits of dust dancing
in the light of the sun shafting in through the east-facing window. The light
was not so misty as it had been when it shone on the path away from the
Servitor District and the house that had been Dalamar's family home for so
many years. His father had inherited the small house from an uncle who had
been canny enough to save the steel coin to purchase it from a woman who
repaired leather shoes. Until then, his father and mother and Dalamar himself
had lived in the halls of those they served, a family who met during the days
only in passing and sometimes spent an evening together after the high folk
had no more use for them. The little house with its tiny garden had become
Dalamar's upon the death of his parents, and he had lived there, with the
permission of the Head of House Servitor and of Lord Ralan, ever since. Five
years he'd gone out from his home to that of his master, each day in the dawn,
and five years he'd returned there in the long purple twilights of summer and
the short sharp ending of winter days. No more, and the privacy afforded him
in his own home, the sense of being master there where no one could order him
about, was all gone. Now he must live in Lord Ralan's house, quartered in this
small room in the servant's wing. Here among those too poor to have their own
houses, among the untrustworthy, he would stay. Lord Ralan had declared it,
and Trevalor, the head of House Servitor, had agreed.
Dalamar turned from the glittering shaft of sunlight to the bed. The room
afforded him little by way of furniture, only this bed, a small table upon
which stood a thick white candle, and a chest of drawers by the window. He had
no chair for himself and none to offer a visitor.
From the bundle on the bed, he took out his clothing. He did not wear the dun
clothes of a servant but the white robe of a mage. This was not usual, for
among the Silvanesti, who structured their lives to conform to a rigid caste
system, no one was lower than servitor, and none deemed less worthy of
learning the High Art of Sorcery. Dalamar's talent was strong, though, and
when House Mystic learned of it, they did what they must for fear that,
unguided, he would go outside the bounds of Solinari's white magic to wild
magic or worse, to Lunitari's red or Nuitari's black magic. They made him a
mage, dedicated him to god-Solinari, and taught him grudgingly. For the
teaching, he was glad but never grateful.
He'd worn the white robe for nearly two years now, but before all, Dalamar was
still a servant, his talent and skill at the command of others. So it had been
today, his hours claimed and counted. All the while he worked, Dalamar felt
himself pulled away, his attention barely on his task, his soul yearning
northward to a place no steward or elf-lord knew about. In a cave beyond the
river lay the hiding of his secret studies. There he kept dark tomes filled
with magic forbidden to all elves. He'd discovered the books by accident,
found them tucked in the far reaches of the little cave, a treasure left by
some bold dark mage who'd come secretly into the elven kingdom where none such
would ever be welcome. Come and gone, he'd left his books behind, and they'd
lain there a long count of years. Each bore an inscription that had, upon