"Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody 3 - Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haydon Elizabeth)

''Emay need to do it, then," Grunthor said. "No need for you to go along, Duchess. 'Is Majesty works
best alone, anyway. We already lost Jo; Oi don't see no reason to risk losing you as well."

The reference to the death of the street child she had adopted as her sister made Rhapsody's eyes
sting, but outwardly she betrayed no sign of sorrow. She had sung Jo's final dirge a few days before,
along with the laments for the others they had lost along the way. She bit back a bitter answer,
remembering that Grunthor had loved Jo almost as much as she had.

'Jo was little more than a child. I'm a trained warrior, trained by the best. Between you and Oelendra
I believe I am fully capable of defending myself. Besides, since you're 'The Ultimate Authority, to Be
Obeyed at All Costs,' you can just command me to live, and I suppose I will have to do so. I wouldn't
want to risk your wrath by dying against orders."

Grunthor surrendered to a smile. "All right, consider it a command, then, miss." He encircled her
warmly in his massive arms. "Take care o' yourself, Yer Ladyship."

'I shall." Rhapsody glanced over at Achmed, who was securing the saddles of the horses Grunthor
had ordered provisioned for them. "Are you ready, Achmed?"

'Before we set out, there's something I want you to see," the king answered, checking the cinches.

'What? I thought you wished to be gone ere full-sun."

'This will only take a few moments, but it should be worth the delay. I want to be in the observatory at
dawn."

Delight splashed over her face, making it shine as brightly as the sun soon would. "The observatory?
The restoration of the stairway is finished?"

'Yes. And if you hurry we can get an overlook of the Inner Teeth and the Krevensfield Plain before
we try to cross it." He turned and gestured to the entrance to the Cauldron, the dark network of tunnels,
barracks, and rooms of state that was his seat of power in Ylorc.

Rhapsody gave Grunthor a final squeeze, then gently broke loose of his embrace and followed the
king through the dismal, windowless hallways, past the ancient statuary that was only now being cleaned
and restored by Bolg artisans to its former glory from the Cymrian Age thirteen centuries before, when
Ylorc, then known as Canrif, had been built.

They entered the Great Hall through its large double doors wrought in gold and inscribed with intricate
symbols, and crossed the enormous expanse of the round throne room, where Bolg masons were
carefully cleaning centuries of grime off the blue-black marble of the room's twenty-four pillars, one
marking each of the hours in the day.

'The renovation is coming along nicely," Rhapsody commented as they hurried through the patches of
dusty gray light, filtering down from the glass blocks that had been embedded in the circular ceiling
centuries before, affording not only illumination but glimpses of the peaks of the Inner Teeth above them.
"This place was a mass of rubble the last time I was here."
 Achmed circumvented an enormous, star-shaped mosaic on the floor; the last of a series of celestial
representations wrought in multicolored marble, cloudily visible beneath a layer of construction grit.