"Cook, Glen - Swordbearer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"We'd better find Plaueri. Father will check." The Safire was a methodical man.

"Wow. I'm overwhelmed." She was no more excited about education than he.

Their instructor, Mikas Plauen, was doing his Brotherhood Novitiate. The Safire had contracted his services with his Order, the Yellow.

The Brotherhood was an anomaly of the times, a non-sectarian organization which, nevertheless, displayed characteristics of a religious mystery cult. Its avowed purpose was to preserve, conserve and transmit knowledge. The lower ranks everywhere appeared as court scribes, secretaries and, as here, as instructors of the nobly-born.

At its highest levels, though, the Brotherhood formed the aristocracy of wizardry. All the great western sorcer- ers belonged, and at the very top stood several men possibly the equal of the Mindak of Ventimiglia.

There were two major Orders, the Red and the Blue, and three minor, the White, the Yellow and the Green. The minor Orders remained devoted to the Brotherhood's founding purpose.

The Red and Blue, though, had become worldly, political and contentious, always striving for control of the Brotherhood and the temporal power that mastery represented. Many an intrigue had been played between the two. The Blue Order was dominant at the moment, but the Red was making a comeback under a cunning, vicious, unscrupulous Magister named Gerdes Mulenex. Rumor said this Mulenex was a western would-be Mindak.

Gathrid did not care. He couldn't untangle the political and philosophical differences between the Orders. He saw only naked power lust. For him it was enough to know that the Orders existed and that, though they supposedly shared a common purpose, sometimes contended to the point of armed confrontation.

The lesson of the day was another of Plauen's dull monologs on the Fall of Anderle. Plauen was not a skilled teacher. He could make anything boring.

"Why are we studying this stuff about the Tempter and the Twins?" Gathrid asked. "They've been dead a thousand years."

"I notice you don't complain when we study Tureck Aarant, Chrismer or one of those."

"They were heroes."

"You're interested in them. That's all. Except for Aarant, they don't have many lessons for us. The Immortal Twins, and Grellner and Aarant, and to a secondary extent, Theis Rogala, are the ones who left a significant legacy. They made the mistakes from which we should learn."

Gathrid shook his head. Same old thing. Over and over and over again. Learn from the mistakes of the past. That was stupid. Only fools lived in the past. His father had said so.

"Pay attention, Gathrid. It's important that you two learn. Nudge Anyeck, please. She's sleeping with her eyes open. Heavens. What am I going to do? They're cretins, and I'm supposed to have them ready in time for. . ."

A chill crept down Gathrid's spine. There was something grim about Plauen's muttering. "In time for what, Brother?" he demanded.

"Nothing. Adulthood, I suppose. I'm sorry. You're exasperating me. I've never dealt with such stubborn students."

Gathrid became mildly embarrassed. That surprised him. Plauen's tactics usually irritated him. Maybe it was the implication of deliberate ignorance colliding with his knowledge that he had been sabotaging the sessions.

"We don't know what Aarant, Grellner and their contemporaries were really like," Plauen said, resuming his lesson. "The stories we have now were shaped by a thousand retellings, and it's in those retellings that they've acquired their significance for us today. The characters we associate with the Brothers' War have become archetypes. Grellner brought Temptation into the Paradise of Anderle. The Immortal Twins lost Innocence. ..."

Gathrid had heard the line of reasoning before. He knew it by heart. Yet Plauen kept returning, as if there were a point he and Anyeck kept missing.

"The real ambiguities of the age surround Tureck Aarant and Theis Rogala. Was Aarant a hero? Not by the usual standards. Was Rogala his servant or master? Did Aarant's weapon, the Great Sword, control him instead of the reverse? Think about those questions. You'll be facing similar, though less symbolic, situations all your lives. We'll be examining them all next week."

The session ended. Gathrid and Anyeck climbed to the parapet of the tower at Kacalief's southeast corner.

"I don't see anything," Anyeck said. "Can you? Your eyes are better.''

Gathrid searched the east. "I don't see anything, either." His gaze followed the road that looped round the marsh and headed south toward Hartog and the Dolvin. Their father had long since disappeared. He turned slowly, scanning the marsh itself, the vineyards, the wild rolling hills to the north. They were the Savards, from which the March took its name. He and his brothers hunted there occasionally. He said, "The hills look dry. Be dangerous if there's a fire."

"Everything is dry. We need rain. They say the marsh is drying up."