"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.2.-.Walls.of.Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Like flint, his words struck fire from those steely eyes.
"The Straight God has no truck with the tools of Satan," she snapped, "nor with those who foul their hands with such tools."
"We are beyond the time when a ruler can pick and choose his tools."
"There is never a time when siding with the Crooked One is excusable."
Quietly, Gil took Ingold's arm, and they descended the steps to the main body of the shadowed Aisle. The old man moved slowly, stiffly, leaning on his staff, Those who had crowded around to see the confrontation between wizard and Chancellor fell back from him, murmuring and making the sign against evil.
Rudy fell quietly into step with them. He nodded back to where the Chancellor and the Bishop were still squabbling and shook his head. "I don't believe this."
"Oh, come, Rudy," Ingold said mildly. "They haven't any proof that I did more than endanger the whole Keep by opening the inner gates." He glanced sideways, sunken eyes amused.
"But I saw the motherloving runes!" Rudy exploded. "They disappeared, goddammitl"
"Did they?" Gil looked across at him curiously. "You know, I didn't see anything at all. I could feel-things, forces, in the air. But it was just--darkness."
Frustrated, Rudy turned to Ingold for support.
"Of course they did," the wizard said. "But you were the only person in the Keep capable of seeing-you and Bektis."
"And it would be worth Bektis' job to say so," Gil added wryly.
She looked tired, Rudy thought, and no wonder. Coming down from Karst and training with the Guards, Gil had begun to have the look of a half-starved alley cat. He had never understood her, either as an intolerant, intellectual scholar in California or now as a warrior of the Keep. But having seen her standing behind Ingold as he faced down all the armies of the night, Rudy felt an awe of her that amounted almost to fear.
"That's how we wizards get our reputation for eccentricity," Ingold went on in his mild, scratchy voice. "We do things that people don't understand, for we see things differently and act as we deem fit. Those who are not mageborn cannot comprehend us and perforce must mistrust us or, rarely, trust us implicitly. It's no wonder wizards have few friends and that those few are mostly other wizards."
They crossed a footbridge, fragments of lamplight glinting on the silent spill of ebony below.
"And then, too, horrible things have been known to happen to those who befriend mages."
The groups of people, the huddled families and restless, prowling watchers, were slowly trickling from the Aisle to return to the black mazes of the Keep. From the doorways on the lower levels, voices could be heard as patrols called to one another.
Alwir and Govannin, each surrounded by a separate retinue, were making their way back up the Aisle, the venom in their voices audible, though distance and echoes blurred the words.
By the gates a line of guards had been set, their drawn swords flickering eerily in the red torchlight. The opposed terrors of both noise and silence no longer filled the Keep. Rudy wondered how long it was until dawn.
"I can't imagine what it's going to be like if you guys do bring the Archmage and the Council of Wizards here," Rudy went on as they approached the darkness of the barracks. "Alwir's going to try to use them against the Bishop, even as he'll use the troops of the Empire of Alketch, if he can get them."
"I have no doubt that he will get them.'' Ingold said quietly. "But since the Alketch is practically a theocracy, he will be lucky if his precious allies don't take his power and hand it over to the Church. He'll need Lohiro on his side to balance that threat if he hopes to invade the Nests of the Dark and still have any sort of kingdom to rule afterward."
"Ingold," Rudy said uneasily, "I think I've seen the Archmage:"
The old man's attention narrowed and focused like the beam of a laser.
"Where? How?"
"Here, in the Keep. In this crystal kind of thing. I got lost."
The wizard raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Rudy hesitantly described the room, the table, the crystal, and the visions he had seen.
Ingold listened intently until Rudy was done and then asked him, "Where was this room?"
"I don't know," Rudy said helplessly. "Someplace on the second level is all I know."
Ingold was silent long enough for Gil to wonder what arcane curses revolved through his mind. finally he sighed.
"That is Lohiro," he said. "I have seen him walk so, down the beach at Quo. But the thing that you speak of I have never seen before." They stopped before the doors of the barracks. Ingold glanced over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the Aisle.
Flickering lights ran to and fro there on hurrying ghostly feet, like spooks on a deadly earnest Halloween. He turned back to them.
"I have sought for some word, some contact with Lohiro for a month now, ever since the fall of Gae.''
"Could you put off your departure?" Gil asked.
"Worst case, it wouldn't take more than two days to find that room."
The old man hesitated, obviously torn. At last he shook his head.
"In two days, the storms will have moved down from the high glaciers to bury the Pass again." He sighed. "If we leave tomorrow, I shall be turning them back the last day down the foothills as it is. After that it will be weeks before we can get out."
"Wouldn't it be worth it?" She glanced around, as if at the bleak world beyond the windowless walls of the Keep. "If you could make contact with him, he could start on his way here tomorrow and you'd cut your time in half."
"Maybe," the wizard said quietly. "If we find the room again. And if the crystal there is actually a means of communication, rather than simply observation. And if the image that you saw, Rudy, was not merely the echo of events long gone, or part of the illusions that surround Quo. Divination by crystal is by no means sure. You remember the Nest of the Dark in the valley to the north of here, Gil. By fire and crystal, it is still shown as blocked up, when you and I have been there and have seen that it has been open for years. And after all that," he continued somberly, "we may still have to set out on this journey, when deep winter has locked down upon the plains. But I will ask you this, Gil . . ,"
Their eyes met, and he grinned suddenly, as rueful as a schoolboy, "It seems to be my night for asking things of you."
She grinned back. "I'll ask you something someday."
The old impish expression flitted briefly across his tired eyes.
"God help me." He smiled. "When we are gone, as your duties with the Guards give you time-look for this room for me. Lohiro will certainly want to see it when he comes."
"All right," Gil agreed quietly.
"Yeah, but she'll have a hell of a time finding the pllace," Rudy argued. "I mean, since she isn't mageborn ..."
Ingold and Gil exchanged a glance, a quick glitter of eyes in the light of the staff that stood between them. Then Ingold smiled.
"That's never stopped her."
There was a moment of silence, then the wizard turned abruptly and vanished through the barracks door.
Gil sighed and looked back out into the random flurries of dark and light in the Aisle. In repose, Rudy noticed, her face had acquired a network of fine-penned lines around the eyes that hadn't belonged to the shy, gawky scholar in the red Volkswagen. It had been a long night, and was wearing on toward dawn. Outside, if the Dark Ones waited, they waited in silence.
Nothing like starting out on a walk of more than fifteen hundred miles with only two hours sleep, he thought tiredly and prepared to turn into the barracks to see to his packing. But another thought crossed his mind, and he stopped.
"Hey, Gil?"