"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

"For the time being, I think it would be best if he and I had some time alone ..."
DragonStar nodded.
"Thank you," Azhure murmured, then bent down to her husband. DragonStar vaulted back onto
Belaguez's back and rode down the trail into Sanctuary.

DragonStar chose to ride unnoticed into Sanctuary; no-one noted his entry, and thus no-one disturbed
him in the three hours before Azhure sought him out.
"You father waits for you," she said, giving DragonStar directions to their apartment. She looked him
over — DragonStar had discarded his linen hip-wrap for a pair of fawn breeches, brown boots and a
white shirt, but he still wore the sword and jewelled purse at his belt.
"And?" DragonStar asked.
Azhure nodded very slightly. "And he is prepared to accept."
DragonStar laughed softly. "Prepared to, but has not yet."
"It is a start."
"Aye, it is that. Azhure ... why have you accepted so easily? Even I denied it for long months."
"Perhaps because I fought to keep you to a viable birthing age when you fought so hard to abort
yourself. I have a mother's belief in her offspring."
DragonStar paled, both at her words and at the hardness in her voice. He began to say something,
but Azhure stopped him with a hand on his chest.
"I had no right to speak thus to you, DragonStar. I have no fight to speak harshly to any of my
children. I was too absorbed in my magic and in Axis to be a good mother to any but Caelum."
"Azhure —"
Azhure well understood why he would not call her "mother".
"— it is never too late to be a friend to your children. I think that you and I will always be
better friends than parent and child."
Azhure smiled, and lowered her eyes a little.
"But," DragonStar continued softly, relentlessly, "I think that Zenith needs you as a friend far more
than I. There are many things that can be saved from this disaster, Azhure, and I do hope that Zenith will
be among them."
Azhure's eyes jerked back to DragonStar's face. "And I haven't even seen her since I came
to Sanctuary!"
"I did not know that," DragonStar said, "but I am not surprised by it."
And then he turned and walked out the door without another word, leaving his mother staring at his
back and with a hand to her mouth in horrified mortification.

Axis was waiting for DragonStar in a small and somewhat unadorned chamber, so plain that DragonStar
thought it almost out of character for Sanctuary. Perhaps Axis had spent hours here when he'd first
arrived, throwing out all the comforts and fripperies and creating an environment austere enough
for any retired war captain to feel at home in.
Axis had never been happy or content away from war, DragonStar thought, and wondered for
the first time how frustrating life must have been for Axis once Gorgrael had been disposed of and
Tencendorian life was relatively peaceful. No wonder he'd handed over power to Caelum: the endless
Councils spent debating the finer details of trading negotiations must have bored his father witless.
 Had it been any more challenging being a god? DragonStar wondered.
Axis was seated at a wooden table, or, rather, he was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, his legs
crossed and resting on the tabletop, his arms folded across his chest.
On the table surface before him sat a jug of beer, two mugs, and a cloth-wrapped parcel. At the
end of the table directly down from Axis sat an empty, waiting chair.
DragonStar paused in the doorway, nodded as an acknowledgment of Axis' presence,
then strolled across to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. "So tell me, Axis, how am I