"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 2 - Dragon Token" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

Yet it seemed that his placid son was now moved to something very like anger. Belatedly, Velden recalled that it had been Rohan who had sent volumes on every subject imaginable to a crippled little boy he had never even met, and long letters had been exchanged for most of Elsen's life.

"Why haven't the orders been given?" Elsen demanded. "By now everyone should be in mourning, and the fires lit, and—"

Velden detailed his reasoning, as he had done with the Sunrunner. But though grudging acceptance gradually showed in Elsen's pale eyes, the long jaw set stubbornly halfway through the explanation.

"This still doesn't make clear why you've held back our soldiers from the fighting. At least send them to Catha Heights, to join with the Syrene army—"

"Under the command of two squires? How effective do you think this 'army' will be now that Kostas is dead?"

"Rihani and Saumer are his kinsmen. His people will follow them. Ours will follow you."

"If your cousin Sethric were here instead of in the Desert, perhaps I would order it. But I'm too old."

"And I am incapable," Elsen finished for him without

bitterness. "Sethric isn't here, so you're safe in suggesting it, aren't you?"

"Hold your tongue," Velden snapped, for his son had hit on the exact truth.

"I have, and for too long." He limped to a chair and sat down to ease the ache in his leg. "I said nothing when you refused to send troops to Waes and kept our gates locked to those who fled that city. I said nothing when Radzyn fell, and Riverport and Graypearl and the rest. Even when Prince Tilal was nearby and could have been given our soldiers to lead—"

"Ossetia has always coveted Grib! Should I have made a gift of our army, our only means of protection—"

"Our best protection would be to help defeat the enemy! But instead you do as Cabar does, and hide behind Pirro of Fessenden's pretty little point of treaty law!"

"That's enough!"

"Selante is ashamed of her father. Norian is undoubtedly ashamed of you—her husband was Pol's squire, and his sister and her family were killed at Gilad Seahold. Blood honor alone should compel you to—"

"You've turned the eloquence of your books to serve reality at last, I see," Velden said in silken tones that should have warned his son. "So work your clever, educated mind around this. The Vellant'im chose to seize the waterways and nothing else in the south. Oh, they tried for Goddess Keep, and we all know what Andry did to them there. But five measures from the Pyrme, the Catha, and the Faolain, the land is untouched. They control our rivers because we can travel on them. And that is all they have done here."

"Yes, but—"

"Yes, but why?" Velden leaned against the carved wooden column in the center of the oratory—an embellishment designed and installed by his father Vissarion shortly before he died of Plague in 701. Each of the thirty-six years since, Velden had ordered it freshly painted on the anniversary of the death. He wondered

suddenly if Pol would undertake some similar remembrance from now on—if he lived to devise one.

"Why?" he repeated. "They wanted the Desert. They destroyed keeps here, but Radzyn and Remagev and Whitecliff still stand."

"Stronghold and Tuath do not," Elsen challenged.

"Sioned burned Stronghold herself. The Merida were responsible for Tuath. Don't interrupt. Why should they want the Desert? What is it about sand and heat and the places where dragons mate that they feel they must possess?"

Elsen's frown was scholarly now, anger having small power over him compared to an intellectual puzzle. Velden noted it with a grim inner smile.

"There are tales, of course—stories for children," the young man said slowly. "Vellanur and I were reading one only a few nights ago."

"He's already reading? At not yet five winters?" Problems were momentarily forgotten in grandfatherly pride.