"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.3.-.Armies.Of.Daylight.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

and they had become lovers.
Alwir grated, "That didn't prevent you from coming out to see how they had
fared!"
The Bishop's dry voice was silky with menace. "It pays to count one's enemies,
my lord Alwir."
There was silence on the steps, save for the rising whine of the icy wind in the
trees. The Guards watched this confrontation uneasily. They had long grown used
to the swift, vicious arguments between Bishop and Chancellor, but there was
never any telling when one might suddenly escalate into civil war.
Then Alwir's eyebrow canted mockingly. "And do you count me so, my lady?"
"You?" The gray light slipped along the curve of her shaven skull as she looked
him up and down, austere scorn in the curve of her delicate lips. "You care not
whether you are numbered among the godly or the wicked, my lord, as long as you
can command what you call your niceties of life. You would sup in Hell with the
Devil, were the food good."
So saying, she turned in a swirl of scarlet and vanished into the darkness of
the gate passage, her ringing footfalls dying away across the vast, empty spaces
of the Aisle beyond toward the dark mazes where the Church kept unsleeping
domain.
Aide whispered, "Rudy, I'm afraid of her."
Hidden by the folds of her heavy cloak, his hand pressed hers. Talk had surged
up again around them. Two of the junior weatherwitches had been offering to send
the coming snowstorm elsewhere until Saerlinn's body could be burned, and
Thoth's harsh, academic voice was saying, "To do so is to presume upon the laws
of the Cosmos that bid the winds blow where they will." There was some argument,
but all of them, with the exception of Ingold and a withered little hermit named
Kta, were terrified of the Scribe of Quo.
Under cover of the talk, Rudy said softly, "What can she do, babe? You're the
Queen. Even if she knew about us— which she doesn't—we aren't doing anyone any
harm."
"No," she murmured. But her fingers trembled in his.
CHAPTER TWO
"Ingold?"
Gil paused in the narrow doorway, all but invisible in the harlequin shadows
that spangled the room. One of the other mages, the wizened little guru Kta, had
told her that he was here, in a tiny chamber hidden deep within the secret
levels of the Keep—the subterranean levels of whose very existence nine Keep
dwellers out often were ignorant. Looking into the room, Gil saw that it was a
miniature version of the "observation chamber" up on the second level, in whose
stone and crystal table Rudy had once seen the possessed Archmage from afar.
Ingold was sitting on the edge of the circular, black stone table, looking into
the changeable brightness that flowed upward from its heart. He raised his head
at the sound of her voice, his face checkered with light and shadow; then he
held out his hand to her, and the white light faded.
"I was on the point of sending for you," he said quietly as she took a seat on
the table's edge beside him. Then, seeing the tautness of her mouth and the way
her long, hilt-blistered fingers fidgeted with the buckle of her sword belt, he
asked, "What is it, my dear?"
"Is it true what Rudy said?" she demanded. "That you're going to lead the
reconnaissance to Gae?"