"Emerson, Ru - Night Threads 01 - The Calling of the Three UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

they carried decimated six-tenths of the townspeople. Worse still:

Even after the Empiric Navy and a rough fleet of Bezjerian cargo
ships routed the Lasanachi, the Gyn Hort were no longer on
terms of trust with Dro Pent, a link not repaired for nearly a
generation.

The third event was not as readily linked to the Emperor, not,
until long after. In the year 770, nineteen years before the in-
vasion of Podhru Harbor and fifty leagues due north in the deep-
est forests ofZelharri, Duke Amami-'s horse went suddenly wild
during a hunt and threw his master. The Duke fell full into a
previously undiscovered pool of Hell-Light and wasted away over
the next four days. When he died the pool was visible day or
night and Amami was no longer even recognizable as a man.
He was survived by his widow Lizelle and their two young chil-
dren, the nera-Duke Aletto and the sin-Duchess Lialta. and
mourned by al] his Duchy. That number included his younger
brother Jadek. who had ridden to the hunt with him, had pulled
him from the Hell-Light without consideration of the personal
risk. He had remained by his brother's bed most of the Duke's
last days and appeared at the funeral in deepest mourning. His
escort of fifty armsmen also wore mourning bands.

Once Duke Amami was sealed in his stone cairn, however,
young Lord Jadek showed no signs of returning to the lands
granted the Duke's younger son, nor of sending his armsmen
away. Two days after the funeral, he announced his betrothal to
the Duchess Lizelle—to help her, he said earnestly, with the
enormous tasks of governing the Duchy until Aletto should come
of age.

4 RU EM6RSON

Like his brother, Jadek was handsome, easygoing, comfort-
able with other nobles and his householdmen alike. Unlike his
brother, Jadek was not greatly loved, though few people could
find any reason why they did not like him. A set to his mouth,
or the flat way his eyes fixed on them, perhaps.

The betrothal raised heavy suspicion of Jadek's motives and
rumor was rife throughout Zeiharri. But there was no specific
wrong thing to point to. Lizelle herself had appeared with "him:

pale, quiet and clad in deep red mourning. But she made no
protest at any time, then or after the wedding, which Jadek held
at the beginning of Gourding-Month, a mere nine days later.

Suspicion remained high thereafter, though most common men
and women had the wit to voice such suspicions in whispers, if