"Huff, Tanya - Wizard 1 - Child Of The Grove 1.1 Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

74 Tanya Huff
Doan kept silent. He appeared to be watching the rain drip off the edge of his helmet.
"We're to divide the men amongst the dukes, but the commander and his captains die. I'm to see that it gets taken care of. "
Doan merely pulled his cloak tighter to stop the rain from running down his neck.
Rael's laughter sounded a great deal like choking. "Life would certainly be a lot easier if my father was a woodsman or a farmer. "
The captain grunted, there being little he could say to his own words.
"If it must be done, then let's do it now. "
"I'll call for volunteers, Commander. " As Rael's head jerked around to face him, he added. "You must only be present, Highness. You don't strike the blows yourself. And it's not a job you can command a man to do. "
By the time the Guard was formed, the rain had stopped. The sun came out, and seven men died.
And the war was over.
"At least I never enjoyed it, Mother, " Rael whispered as the breeze lifted his hair from his forehead and blood soaked into the ground at his feet. "At least I never enjoyed it. "
The fire reached the grimy foot of the elderly woman tied to the stake and began to lick daintily at the blistering skin.
"'Ware the child, " she screamed in a mad voice raw with much shrieking. "'Ware the creation of Lord Death's children. "
"Lord Death's children?" Lord Elan half turned, enough so he could see the king's counselor but not so much that he must look at the king. That pain at least he would spare himself. "What does she mean, Lord Death's children?"
The golden-haired man lounged back in his chair and sighed. "The race of Man was created for Lord Death's benefit. Thus Man, " he inclined his head to-

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ward the stake with chilling courtesy, "and Woman also, are Death's children. "
"It burns! Brilliance within! Brilliance without!" And then not even madness was enough to overcome the effects of the flames. The old woman sagged against the ropes and prophesied no more.
The king shifted on his throne, hips rotating with each spasm of the body on the pyre.
"She wasn't very clear, " Lord Elan grunted. Full lips molded themselves into a smile. "She was clear enough earlier and more than willing to repeat the entire prophecy as often as I chose to listen. " Even the most obscure prophet could be convinced to find clarity and while there was no real need in this instance, the convincing had filled a few otherwise tedious hours.
"Then what does it mean?" The old lord sounded tired. The greasy smoke stung his eyes and coated his throat. He hated executions, even the most necessary. and had attended this one only because he'd vowed that the king would spend as little time alone with his counselor as possible. Others of the nobility, those who had not died with the army-he saw their faces wide-eyed in the firelight-seemed to be taking their idea of pleasure from what pleasured their liege. He gritted his teeth and glanced quickly at the king.
He was beginning to lose interest now that the body had stopped moving.
The voice of the king's counselor was closer to content than it had been in years. He lifted his face to let the evening breeze cool skin flushed by the heat. "It means, Lord Elan, that I have something to look forward to. "
"But we're going back to Ardhan. " "No. "
"But... " Lord Elan jerked as sapphire eyes caught his and held. A thin rope of drool fell from one corner of suddenly slack lips. He jerked again as he was released and would have fallen had he not clung, panting, to the arm of the king's throne.

76 Tanya Huff
"I said no, " the counselor repeated quietly. He stared past the pyre, out over the remains of the army. So clever of him to have kept the cavalry back; they would replace the officers killed and, well, one could always get more peasants. South and east, he thought. I will create an Empire to the south and east, giving Ardhan enough time to fulfill the prophecy. Glancing down at the smoldering pile of meat and bone, he rubbed long fingers against the silk covering his thighs. "Well, " he purred in a voice barely audible over the sizzle and crackle of burning fat, "almost enough time. "
The army returned triumphant to the city, although the king did not ride proudly at its head but was carried on a litter. Rael, with the Elite behind him, led the army home.
The war quickly became a thing of the past. Men went back to holdings and fields, battle armor was polished and put away, and Rael received a most unexpected welcome home from the Duke of Belkar's blue-eyed daughter-who had supposedly ridden to the palace to meet her father. Rael was pleasantly surprised to find that blue eyes held depths as well as green and that the eyes of mortal women also glowed.
The king did not recover.
Glinna now slept in the room next to the royal bedchambers, when she slept at all. The infection had returned and spread, and now the king's whole lower body strained against its increasingly heated covering of skin. She did what she could but finally, no longer able to deny what training and common sense told her, she admitted defeat.
"His life is now in the hands of Lord Death, " she told the prince. "I can do nothing more. "
"My father doesn't believe in Lord Death, " said Rael bitterly.
"Well, Lord Death believes in him, " replied the surgeon and left Rael alone with his thoughts and his dying father.

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But Lord Death, never predictable, stayed his hand and the king did not die; although he didn't exactly live. Affairs of state were left in the hands of the council and royal decisions increasingly fell to the prince, for the king tired easily and Glinna demanded he rest.
"Why have a council, " she snapped, prying dispatches from his hand and shoving them at an embarrassed Belkar, "if you don't use it?"
Raen raged against the weakness that held him to his bed, and the raging left him weaker still, until he was only a shadow of the man he had been.
"I am no longer a man. "
"You're more of a man than anyone in the kingdom, " Rael told him, his eyes filling with tears he refused to shed.
The king laughed humorlessly and stared down at his wasted body. "That doesn't say much for the other men in the kingdom. "
The king was dying and everyone knew it. Already a funereal hush hung over the land. The dukes, down to crippled Lorn and ten-year-old Hale, gathered in the King's City, waiting. Rael went numbly about the task of learning to rule. He knew he should go to the Grove and tell his mother that the mortal man she loved lay dying, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. He told himself that Milthra, being who and what she was, probably already knew. That didn't help very much.
One morning, in the quiet hours just past dawn, some five weeks after the war had ended, the Duke of Belkar came to the king. The two men shared an age, but the man on the bed made the other seem obscenely healthy.
Belkar looked down at his liege and his friend and wondered where to begin. Raen spoke before he got the chance, anger turning the words to edged steel.
"It would have been so much easier had Lord Death
collected me on the battlefield. Then those I love would