"Janny Wurts - Pass Of Orlon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

day's travel beyond Erdane the way became wild and untenanted. The
scrublands of Karmak gave rise to forested downs laced with streamlets.
The mist seemed alive with the rush of running water and the air keen and
brittle with coming snow. More than once, the party started deer from the
thickets. If the bucks were royally antlered, their incoming winter coats
were fiat and lacking gloss; even after summer's forage, the does were sadly
thin.
The mist's blighted legacy afflicted more than creatures in the wild.
After nightfall, perhaps due to the chill, Asandir relented and engaged a
room at a run-down wayside tavern that in better times had been a hospice
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tended by Ath's initiates.
'What became of them.~' Lysaer asked.
'What happens to any order of belief when its connection to the
mysteries becomes sullied?' Asandir chose not to entrust his tall stallion
to the ill-kempt groom, but attended to his saddle girths himself. 'Desh-
thiere's darkness disrupted more than sunlight on this world. The link that
preserved was lost along with the Riathan Paravians.'
The pent-back sorrow in his statement did not invite further inquiry;
and if the carved gates at the innyard were still intact, the beautiful,
patterned sigils of ward had lost any power to guard. The tavern's musty
attic proved to be riddied with iyats, which perhaps explained the dearth of
clientele.
By the time the sorcerer banished the pests the hour had grown late;
the commonroom with its great blackened beams stood lamentably
empty. While here the accents of outland strangers did not provoke
hostilities, still the stooped old innkeeper took care not to turn his back.
He served his odd guests in silence, while his wife stayed hidden in the
kitchen.
The fare was bland and too greasy; Lysaer left his plate barely
touched. Arithon had seen worse on a ship's deck. After sighs and a
martyred show of eye-rolling, Dakar righteously forwent ale for mulled
cider and a bowl of the inn's insipid stew. The bread had no weevils that
he could see, so he ate it, and Lysaer's portion, too. Then he stalked
from his emptied bowls to a bed that he swore would have lice and
mildew in the blankets.

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This failed to secure him permission to retire in the hayloft. Perhaps as a
precaution, Asandir sat all night in the hallway, his back against the door
panel.
'Unforgiving as a reformed priest,' Dakar commiserated to Arithon; yet
whether the sorcerer stood vigil to curb the excesses of his apprentice or to
curtail further outings by the Master of Shadow, or whether he simply
wished space for clear thought, the Mad Prophet was too wise to ask. He
flopped crosswise on a mattress of dusty ticking and his chain reaction of
sneezes changed into snores that would have done credit to a hibernating