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

justified in choosing whatever path she had to in order to grasp her destiny.
Qeteb spoke lies!
Didn't he?
StarLaughter lay on the floor of the mausoleum and hated.
More, she lusted for revenge. Qeteb could not speak such lies and blacken her son's memory —
Gods! Was her son trapped under that mountain of metal and odious flesh, screaming for her
to get him out?
— and think that she would do nothing about it.
StarLaughter bared her teeth, and made a small sound deep in her throat that was half curse, half
growl.
Her hands clawed on the floor, her nails scratching at its surface.
She lay there and hated, and she lay there and lusted for revenge.
StarLaughter was very, very good at nourishing both hatred and revenge. She had had many
thousands of years of practice at both.
/ nurtured my son, she thought, her entire body rigid with the intensity of her animosity. I
nurtured him and kept him and held and loved him through such extremes of pain and despair
that you — a Demon — cannot imagine. I offered him my breast, and he took it.
I loved him, and yet you stole him from me, Qeteb, and then sullied his memory with lies.
"My son hated me?" StarLaughter whispered, her hands still clawing slowly at the floor. "He didn't
hate me, he adored me ... every Icarii adored me! No-one laughed at me. No-one!"
She lifted her head slightly and stared at Qeteb, now on the far side of the mausoleum whispering
with his fellow nightmares.
You are the simpleton, Qeteb, if you think you can deny both my son and myself our destinies.
At StarLaughter's thought, Qeteb turned slowly and regarded her.
StarLaughter did not move, nor drop her eyes, nor even disguise the hatred and resentment in them.
After a moment Qeteb turned his back to her again.
Now you have one more enemy, StarLaughter thought, and began to mop at the blood on her face
and neck with a corner of her much-bloodied robe.
Her son hadn't hated her ... had he?
StarLaughter paused in her attempts to clean her face, and her entire face trembled as doubt overran
her mind.
Had he?
Chapter 6
TheEnchantedSongBook


"Tell us of Caelum," Axis said, as they sat down. "And tell us of yourself. We have heard only garbled
snippets, and we would know the truth."
Where to start? DragonStar thought. "You realise," he finally said, "the depth of manipulation that
has bound our family?"
Axis nodded. "I thought my task had been to defeat Gorgrael and unite Tencendor, but in reality, my
task, as Azhure's, was to create the circumstances that would create the StarSon."
DragonStar's mouth quirked. "Yes. Even WolfStar had been manipulated in order that Azhure be
created and Axis be trained, so that you might the better perform your task in creating ..."
"You," Azhure said very softly. She did not look at either her husband or her son.
"The manipulation," DragonStar said, "extends beyond our family. It involves this entire land and its
peoples, and stretches beyond that ... back to the world of the Enemy. We are but the result of tens and
tens of thousands of years of manipulation. Even longer, perhaps."
"By what?" Axis demanded. "By who?"
"By the Star Dance," DragonStar said. "Or whatever it represents."