"Hambly,.Barbara.-.Darwath.5.-.Icefalcons.Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

In the other direction that pale groove drove south, arrow-straight, the scuffed smudges like footprints marking Vair's previous camps. Every draw and wash and coulee formed serpentine patterns of red and sepia, silver agonizingly bright through the dust-green cottonwood and sedge.
He could see the rabbits in the brush, the fishlike glowing sinuosity of water elementals in the stream. He was aware of the Empty Lakes People, riding in all directions still, scattered and broken after their defeat and going back to their hunting trails, telling themselves they were fools who followed fools when mammoth and uintatheria roved the draws.
And below him, on the flank of one rolling hill, he saw a single rider, sitting a single gray horse.
She watched the wagons also, no expression on her fire-scarred face. A big woman, rawboned and heavy-muscled, shoulders as wide as a man's under a tunic of wolfskin, a shirt of mammoth wool she'd woven herself on a walking-loom, for who can trust another's luck and goodwill in something that will abide against one's skin?
Somehow he could recognize her, as even from this height he could count the black spots on prairie hens. A harsh face, with mocking pale eyes, framed in hair that was white where the fire scars ran up under it. She sat at ease, her hands resting on her thighs, and when next the Icefalcon looked she was gone.
Blue Child.
Lover of Dove in the Sun, who had died on a hunting raid under his command.
Usurper of his birthright, who had branded him a coward and pulled darkness over the last year of old Noon's life.
Engineer of a hoax upon their mutual Ancestors that could have cost all the people dearly through the winter.
And warchief of the Talking Stars People.
Some day, thought the Icefalcon, and I think the day will be soon, there will be a reckoning between us.
The sun called to him, climbing in its splendor at noon. But the air seethed with demons, smoky forms invisible in the dazzle, and he would be a fool, he thought, to challenge them. So he sought the earth again, and the warm cave under the cut bank, where Cold Death sat beside his body, murmuring spells to keep demons and death at bay.




?Chapter 9

"Any change?"
Minalde shook her head. "I tell myself it's better that way," she whispered, though Gil suspected, looking down at the still bronze face of the man on the bed, that Rudy was beyond being waked. A single pine knot burning in an iron holder smeared gritty yellow light on the younger woman's features. With no guarantee how long the siege would last, use of torches and pine knots was kept to a minimum.
There was no need for more light in this room anyway. Ilae came in several times a day to check on her patient and renew the spells of healing, the spells of warmth that kept him from sinking into cold and death, but as a mage she could see in the dark. When Alde sat here, as she came in many times a day to do, she needed no more light than the single lamp could provide.
Even by its forgiving radiance she looked horrible, wasted and white and beaten. Gil knew she kept up a good face where others could see her. In the Keep they called her brave. Here she wept.
Rudy had been Gil's friend for seven years, since their first unfortunate meeting in the California hills. He was the final link that held her to the world they both had abandoned, the world neither ever quite forgot. She had shed tears in this room herself.
"Look, I hate to bug you about this," she said, "but Lord Sketh will die of grief if he doesn't see you. I can tell him to get lost if you want.
Minalde shook her head and squeezed out the rag that lay soaking in a bowl of scented vinegar water to wipe down her face. "I'll have to eventually," she said. "My old nurse always told me, 'There's no sense putting off."'
She got up. When she was working-meeting with the Keep Lords, hearing the endless squabbles and quibbles that the Keep dwellers brought to her for justice, conferring with the hunters and the wardens of the hydroponics gardens about the division of food and labor-she dressed in one of several formal gowns, cut and styled after the fashion they had learned in the days of the Realm's strength to associate with dignity and authority.
She was so dressed now: train, flowing sleeves, lavish embroidered trapunto- and jewel-work patterns, though few people in the Keep knew that she took delight in making the gowns herself. The green wool looked muddy by the smoky light, the red velvet of the pillows behind her like old blood.
"We might as well get it over with." Alde readjusted the elaborate braids of her coiffure, pinned over them the veil that had been part of her trousseau, pale-green silk that fell past her hips. "I know what Lady Sketh wants."
Generally when Lord Sketh asked for an audience it was Lady Sketh's idea.
"We haven't even asked their intention," declared the tall, pearshaped man, folding his hands before the worked silver buckle of his belt. "We've made ourselves prisoners here, living like jailbirds, for nearly a week now, when the matter may be one that can be adjusted by compromise."
"Two siege engines," Minalde pointed out in her low sweet voice, "and eleven hundred men marching fully armed up the pass does not bear the appearance of compromise to me." In the cool white splendor of the glowstones that hung from wire baskets in her small conference room, she looked worse, thin and stretched, dark smudges under her eyes.
"Had they wished to parley at any time in the past week, a man could have come to the steps of the Keep and knocked on the doors. Ilae?"
She turned to the wizard in the low chair to her left. Ilae looked older, and more queenly, with her red hair braided up into a crown on her head. Maia, erstwhile Bishop of Penambra and now head of the Church in the Keep, sat at Alde's right, the position of honor.
Minalde had embroidered his formal tabard, too, as a gift on his forty-second birthday last year. The carved black chair in which Tir usually sat during his mother's audiences had been taken away.
"In my scrying crystal I see them, my Lady," said the girl, and touched the ruby tucked in the palm of her left hand. "Men with drawn swords stand guard on either side of the Keep doors. Master Wend tells me there've been fights, too, 'twixt their men and Yar's archers, and yestere'en they tried to ambush those as had tried again to get through the pass."
"Well, naturally there's been fighting," said Enas Barrelstave, who had accompanied Lord Sketh to his audience. Barrelstave was one of the wealthiest commoners in the Keep, and something of a demagogue as well.
"We meet them with a rain of arrows; our hunters are shooting at whoever gets too far from the main camp. We assumed from the beginning that their intentions were ill."
He glanced accusingly at Janus, on one side of the door that led to Alde's private chambers. Gil guarded the other, their black surcoats a silent reminder of the Guards' support. "Of course they're expecting more trouble."
"The least you can do, my Lady," said Sketh, "is arrange a parley."
"No."
"May I remind your Ladyship," said Barrelstave, "with all due respect, that perhaps his young Lordship might have a different opinion were he here to disagree?"
Cheap shot, thought Gil, angry at the not too tactful reminder that Minalde, as regent for Tir, was now nothing more than the widow of the last King, seven years dead. Without Tir, her official position was considerably weakened. I'll remember that later, pal.
Alde's jaw tightened for a moment, then she said in a pleasant, conversational tone, "Very well. Would you, Lord Sketh, or you, Master Barrelstave, like to be the one who goes outside?"
The two men looked at each other, having quite clearly envisioned someone of lesser status in the role of messenger. Still, Gil had to give them credit: faced with Put up or shut up, both volunteered, and Lord Sketh, who knew some of the ha'al tongue, was given the job.
Janus picked Melantrys as Doorkeeper for the operation. She could catch flies in her hands and had been shot at enough by bandits that whizzing arrows wouldn't bother her. Gil, Minalde, and Ilae stood just inside the inner set of Keep Doors, backed up by a sizable contingent of Guards, swords drawn and ready.
Ilae wrought two small fire-spells, placing them just between the armed warriors standing at the outer Doors-not easy to do, working at a distance with a scrying stone. The Alketch guards clearly knew there were mages in the Keep because they ran at the first flicker of flame between them.
Ilae, tongue between her teeth with concentration, put a second burst of sparks a little lower down the steps to get them to keep their distance, but whoever was in charge of the Alketch troops had evidently thought of that one because the whole area around the Keep-and every foot of ground in the camp, set far enough from the walls to make spell-casting difficult for amateurs, said Ilae-had been swept and plucked of last year's dead leaves and weeds like a king's garden on his daughter's wedding day.
On the heels of the second flame-burst Lord Sketh stepped forth, raised high the white flag of truce, and cried out in the ha'al tongue, "Parley! We beg a parley!" while at the same moment Janus slammed shut the inner Doors and twisted the locking-ring.
Gil was watching Ilae's eyes. She saw them flare wide and heard the gasp of her breath and knew Lord Sketh had been fired on or otherwise attacked in the doorway. Minalde, watching, too, said in her very clear sweet voice, "I told that imbecile."
"He's safe in," said Ilae a moment later. "Melantrys got the Doors shut."