"P. C. Hodgell - Kencyrath Anthology 2 - Book 04 - Blood and Ivory - A Tapestry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hodgell P. C)

Gothregor 2983

IT WAS THE SIXTH NIGHT of summer, and the moon was dark. High over the Riverland, wisps of
cloud blew confusedly this way and that, making the stars flicker. Mountains blotted out the sky to east
and west, but the hunched, gathering darkness to the north was far more profound, and ominous.
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Gothregor's forecourt lay in deep shadow. Across it, however, the gallery windows of the Women's
Halls flared briefly with wary light and flickered with shadows. No one slept. The fortress waited and
watched as it had night after night after night.


"Dead!" cried a muffled voice. Stone ground on stone as if the very walls shrank from that terrible cry.
"Dead, dead, dead!"


Between the forecourt and the inner ward of Gothregor rose the keep, ancient, fragile heart of House
Knorth on Rathillien. Its door opening into darkness. The low-beamed hall within seemed to exhale—
haaaaa—its chill breath rank with a hideous stench and the buzz of flies. Inside, footsteps paced the
stone floor, their echo instantly smothered. On and on they went, around and around, and a low, hoarse
voice went with them, muttering.


"How l-long?" asked one of the people standing in the doorway. He spoke in a husky whisper, as if the
smell had taken him by the throat.


A large shape moved uneasily behind him. Furtive light from the windows opposite caught the glint of a
randon captain's silver collar. "Five days, lord. Ever since we brought the body back from the college at
Tentir. He won't let the priests have it."


"Sweet Trinity. A soul trapped for f-five days in a rotting carcass . . . I don't understand." The Highborn
ran distraught fingers through dark hair flecked with gray. He was young, barely eighteen, but life had
already raked him with its claws. "What h-happened, Sere? How did my brother die? And why wasn't I
told sooner? God's claws, I was only upriver at Wilden on house business! You m-must have passed
right by me on the River Road, without a word. If this lady hadn't somehow learned of it . . . "


"I'd like to know how," muttered the tall Kendar named Sere.


He shot a hard look at the slender young woman standing back a pace, listening, motionless except for
where the fretful wind teased her traveling cloak. Under hood and mask, her expression was unreadable.


Behind her, her attendant smirked. The lower half of his face seemed briefly to distort, the lip's corner