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

trailed by the obsequious Bektis, his Court Mage, who alternately rubbed his
long white hands together or stroked his waist-length, blue-silver beard as if
in a self-congratulatory caress.
The Chancellor came to a halt on the lowest step and looked down at Ingold with
an impassive face. "So your information was correct," he said, in his rich,
well-modulated voice. "The thing can be done."
"By those with the strength," Ingold returned quietly. "Yes."
"And the reconnaissance?"
"We shall leave this time tomorrow morning."
Alwir gave a satisfied little nod. Beyond them, the rising of the cloud-veiled
sun had cast a kind of sickly, diffuse light upon the snowy wastes of the Vale,
bringing forth from shadows the tangled grubbiness of the barricaded food
compounds and the chain-hung pillars on the hill of execution across the road
from the Keep.
"And these?" The Chancellor's careless gesture took in the other mages—old
women, young men, solemn black Southerners, and ice-white shamans from the
plains.
"Believe me, my lord," Ingold said, and there was a flicker of anger in his
shadowed eyes, "whether or not it is decided to undertake this invasion, these
people constitute your chief defense against the Dark Ones. Do not treat them
lightly."
Alwir's eyebrows went up. "An unprepossessing lot," he commented, scanning them,
and Rudy felt that those enigmatic, speedwell-blue eyes lingered for a moment on
where he had returned again to Aide's side. "But perhaps more dangerous than
they look."
"Far more dangerous, my lord." The new voice drew Rudy's eyes and, half against
his will, Alwir's as well. In the suffused pallor of the dawn, the Guards on the
steps had doused their torches in the snow, but within the gate passage above
them fires still reflected redly on the polished walls. Against that reflection
stood the red-robed shape of the Bishop of Gae, Govannin Narmenlion, her bald
head and narrow, delicately jointed hands giving her the appearance of a
skeleton wrapped in a crimson billow of flame.
"If you undertake your invasion using the Devil's tools, my lord," she warned,
in a voice as dry and deadly as famine winds, "they will be its downfall. They
are excommunicates, who have traded their souls to Evil for the powers they
possess."
Anger stained the big man's cheeks, but he kept the melodious calm of his voice.
"Perhaps if the Straight Faith were as dependent upon a centralized government
as the Realm is, you would be even at this moment showering them with
blessings," he commented sardonically.
The fine-chiseled nostrils flared in amused scorn. "Such words tell more about
the speaker than they do about their subject," she remarked, and Alwir's flushed
face reddened further. "Better your precious invasion should fail than that you
should bring yourself under the wrath of the Church by harboring such as these.
Having commerce with the mage-born—the magedamned!—fouls the soul like clinging
mud, until all the Faithful can see it, and cast you out. Even to converse with
them taints you."
Rudy felt Aide's icy fingers close over his and, glancing sidelong at her, he
saw the shame struggling in her taut face. She had been a good daughter of the
Faith until the rainy night on the road from Karst when he had found his power—