"P. N. Elrod & Nigel Bennett - His Father's Son" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elrod P N)

then without warning the animal took him as well. A desperate urgency seized his being, and he thrust
harder into her slick wetness, anticipating the coming explosion, wanting it, needing it. In her sleep she
pushed back, equally urgent, arching against him. He was so deep inside her, yet felt himself opening,
spreading wide as a rose in the sunlight. Then, spasming, quite out of control, at one with his spirit, and out
of his body, he burst within her. Once more she moaned, this time from fulfillment, not longing, and he
glimpsed a smile as it flicked across her sleeping face.
Dear Goddess, could there be any greater pleasure?
 And inside his head came an answering voice, clear as church bells on a summer’s day.
No.
They slept together, he still inside her, softening slowly, until they were once again apart. Yet he held her
close, she, he, they, as one in their shadowy heaven.
He dreamed, and in his dream, she came to him, held his face gently in her hands, and spoke. “It will be
ever thus, my love, ever thus. I am of thee and thou of me. We are truly one and will never sunder.”
He smiled in his sleep, and as she watched him, eyes wide in the darkness, a single tear slid down
Sabra’s cheek and melted into the pillow.

The thick oaken doors of the great hall of the Castle Orleans creaked open on their mighty hinges,
swirling the smoke-laden air into delicate spirals that disappeared upward into the fading golden light of
sunset, and Richard d’Orleans strode through. The rushes on the stone flags crackled under his boots as
two weary servants hauled hard and pulled the doors slowly shut again, sealing him in the vast, dim space.
He pushed back the thick protective hood of his long cloak and looked about at the wreckage of triumph.
The smell that arose all around him would have given many a man cause to retch. The feasting after the
great tourney had gone on for several days; the floor was littered with rotting food, spilled wine, pools of
vomit. None of the scullions had yet attempted any cleaning. They’d indulged as liberally as any. The
collective sickness pressed heavily upon the whole of the stagnant keep. Richard noted and ignored its
near-physical presence, immersed as he was in his own thoughts and fears.
He’d been summoned by his father, Duke Montague d’Orleans. Sabra had insisted that he answer to the
old man, and Richard could no more refuse her than stay his breathing. So he’d dressed in the fine linen and
leather that she’d laid out for him with her own hands, kissed her chastely on the forehead, and gone for her
sake, not the duke’s.
As things stood now, he had no need to obey the savage old despot ever again. So far as Richard was
concerned, he was free of him, of all the past, free of everything except his loathing for it.
How mightily his life had changed since the great tourney, since his ignominious defeat at the hands of
that damned boy. Only a few days had passed, yet in that time Richard d’Orleans had been—quite
literally—reborn into a new and never-ending life. While he waited in the empty room, looking idly at
familiar tapestries covering the cold stone walls, the events of the past few days came back to him with
startling clarity. From the depths of defeat and despair he’d risen to a fresh beginning given to him by his
lady, Sabra of the Lake. He was changed, from mere mortal to something much more.
His heart raced, and he caught his breath at the thought. The impossibility of it was almost too much to
take in, but on his left hand he bore the undeniable truth that it had indeed happened to him. His third finger
had been severed by a dagger thrust at the tourney, but because of his change a healing such as he’d never
imagined had taken place, magically reversing the maiming. Though the scar that went around the base of
his mended finger was not like to go away, he felt no twinge of pain from it. Indeed, its white ring was
constant and absolute proof that no injury could truly harm him, that no enemy could ever strike him down
again. He had inhuman strength and the skill to use it to withstand anyone now. He clenched his restored
hand into a fist and smiled openly as the raw power surged within him. He was what he’d always longed to
be: a true champion, afraid of none, invincible, free.
Yet there was a price to pay. Sunlight was now his enemy, as too was flowing water. He discovered
that the first day after his change; Sabra had warned that these would kill him if he lingered in either for too
long. Like her, he was a creature more of night than day, a creature of earth and darkness and shadow like