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

Something dark and horrid shifted within Axis — jealousy, resentment, bitterness — and then
shifted again, and, stunningly, slid into oblivion.
He needed a friend. Badly. The thought brought such profound relief that Axis realised he
had tears in his eyes.
He blinked them away and raised his gaze back to DragonStar. "How did you realise how
much I needed a friend?"
A corner of DragonStar's mouth twitched. "I have learned a great deal of wisdom since I
demanded of you that you set Caelum aside and make me Star Son instead."
Axis almost smiled, and then felt amazement that he could smile at this memory. "You were a
precocious shitty bastard of an infant."
"Well ... technically 'bastard' I was not, but everything else you say is true enough. Axis, whatever
else has happened between us and whatever else I have said to you and thought about you and hated
you for, I do thank you for setting me on the path of adversity, for without it I would have been another
Gorgrael, or another Qeteb. Do you remember what you told me in Sigholt, that first time you set eyes
on me?"
"I said that I would not welcome you into the House of Stars until you had learned both
humility and compassion." Axis paused, considering DragonStar carefully. "And sitting across from
me now I can see a man whose face is lined, not with hate and bitterness as once it was, but with humility
and compassion.
"DragonStar —" Axis shook his head slightly, "how strange it seems to call you that — I think the
time has finally arrived to welcome you into the House of Stars."
DragonStar paused before replying, allowing himself time to cope with the emotion flowing through
him. How many hours had he spent lost in useless bitterness as a youth and man, longing for this moment,
yet refusing to admit the longing?
"I would be honoured if you would accept me in, Axis," DragonStar said, "but as your friend
before anything else." Caelum had already welcomed DragonStar into the family House. The fact that
Axis now wished to do the same meant that the final bridge between DragonStar and his birth
family would finally be repaired.
Tencendor could not be rebuilt without it.
Axis stood, and as he did so the door to the chamber opened and Azhure walked in.
DragonStar rose, staring at her. He wondered if it was her womanly instinct that allowed her to walk
into the chamber at precisely the right moment, or just her attentive ear at the keyhole. She had
changed from the ordinary day gown she'd been wearing when she'd fetched him to this chamber, and
now wore a robe of purest black that was relieved only by a pattern of silvery stars about its hem. Her
raven hair tumbled down her back to be lost in the folds of her skirt, and her blue eyes danced with love
and, possibly, even a little of her lost magic.
DragonStar stared, then collected himself and half-bowed in her direction, acknowledging her as
mother, woman and witch.
Axis smiled and held out his hand to Azhure, then held out his other hand for DragonStar. "It seems,
my beloved," he said to Azhure, "that we have a new companion for our faded constellation."
She laughed, then embraced them both. "I welcome us all back into the House of Stars," she said.

Chapter 4
 WolfStar


WolfStar rolled over on his back and screamed. Agony knifed through his belly, then ran down his legs in
rivulets of liquid horror. He jerked his knees to his chest and hugged them, now gasping for breath, and
trying to ride out the successive waves of pain that coursed through him.
Raspu's poison, he supposed, or Mot's, or Barzula's, pumped into him during successive rapes.