"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 08 - The Dragon in Lyonesse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

the news in his letter.”

Dafydd was looking at them both now with the appearance of only a mild interest in what they were
saying-but both knew his look disguised a burning curiosity.

“You see, Dafydd,” Jim said, “this morning we got this letter-“

“Let me tell it,” said Angie. “I’m faster.”

She was.

“You see, Dafydd,” Jim said-after Angie, true to her promise, had filled their guest in with half the words
Jim himself would have used-“how clever Chandos is? There’s nothing in that letter, nothing at all that
could compromise him; but he’d have known that we’d hear this news too, sooner or later, and then all
he had to tell us would be clear.”

“Forgive my weakness of wit, James,” said Dafydd, “but what is this ‘all’ you talk about?”

“Why, it has to be obvious to anyone that the only man in England who could raise a force of fighting
men that size, and get away with it, would be the half brother of the King; which Cumberland is. Also, the
King would not only have to know about it, but be in agreement with Cumberland’s doing it; and there
could be only one reason he’d agree. That’d be if he was actually planning an invasion of France; and
what Cumberland would be doing would be just the first quiet step toward drawing together an army for
it.”

“Your King Edward is well past the age of taking the field in war,” said Dafydd.

“Exactly! And that’s why Cumberland’s being the front man. But there’s more than invasion news in that
message in Chandos’s letter for us. It’s a warning for us-me, you, Brian-to promise ourselves to fight
with the part of the army Chandos will command.”

“Me, he cannot have,” said Dafydd. “I have a duty that goes before any other at this time. A duty of
responsibility to those I love and danger to their land-the Drowned Land of my ancestors; and that is
what brings me to you at this time, for it concerns magick.”

“Magic?” said Jim. He looked suddenly and suspiciously at Angie. She raised her eyebrows
questioningly.

“Magic?” she inquired.

“I say to you it is magick that threatens them,” said Dafydd, “and of magick, as you know, I have none.”

They looked at him.

“Magick?” Jim echoed once more, in as close to the way everybody pronounced it here as he could
manage. “Whose magick?”

“That of what held the Loathly Tower and owned the creatures we encountered there.”

“The Dark Powers?”