"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 10 - The Black Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

In the middle of the night Verrarc woke to find Raena gone. On the hearthstone
a candle stood burning in a punched tin lantern. He lay awake in their bed,
watching the candle-thrown shadows dance on the ceiling. She had gone back to
the temple, he supposed, and left the candle burning against her return. She
might take all night for her scrying, but try as he might, he could not fall
asleep with her gone. Although he tried to convince himself that he worried
about her, he knew that in truth he was jealous.
Verrarc got up and dressed. From the stub of the dying candle he lit a fresh
taper and placed it in the lantern. Just what was she doing with that Lord
Havoc? If he wasn't truly a god, and Verrarc tended to believe his brother,
Lord Harmony, on that point, then he was some sort of powerful spirit, and
everyone knew that spirits took a fancy to flesh and blood women on occasion.
The thought made Verrarc's fists clench. He grabbed the lantern and left the
house by the back door.
Outside, the winter night lay damp around him. One of his watchdogs roused in
its kennel, but he whispered, 'Good dog, Grey, good dog,' and the big hound
lay back down. He unlatched the gate and left the courtyard, then turned
uphill. By lantern light he picked his way across snow-slick cobblestones till
he reached the frozen path that led to the ruined temple, directly above his
compound on the east side of Citadel. Where the path levelled out, he paused
in the shelter of a pair of huge boulders. If Raena should be leaving and see
his light, she would throw a raging fit that he'd come spying on her. Let her!
He walked on.
At the entrance to the tunnel he hesitated. Although he could hear nothing, he
could see a faint silver glow down at the far end. She was working witchery,
all right, and hiding it from him yet again. With a soft curse under his
breath, he climbed through the narrow entrance. On the packed dry earth
inside, his leather boots made no sound. Slowly, a few steps at a time,
stopping often to listen, Verrarc crept toward the silver glow, which spilled
out of the door to the inner chamber. Although he considered blowing out the
candle, he had no way of lighting it again. He set the lantern down and edged
forward until he could peer round the broken doorway into the chamber.
Naked to the cold Raena was kneeling on the cold dirt floor and staring at a
pool of silver light that seemed to drip from the stone wall like water. All
at once she flung her head back and began to chant in some language that he
didn't know. She raised her arms and let her body sway back and forth as her
voice sobbed and growled in a long sprung melody. Despite the cold she was
sweating; he could sec her face glistening in the silver light. Her black hair
hung in thick damp strands like snakes. Even though he couldn't understand her
words, he could recognize her tone of voice. She was begging someone or
something; now and again she wailed on the edge of tears as if she keened at a
wake.
The silver glare filled the corners of the chamber with night-dark shadows,
and as Raena's swaying body blocked the light, her own shadow swayed and
flickered on the far wall. Out of the corner of his eye Verrarc saw creatures
standing in the dark, small things, half-human and half-beast, all blurred and
faint as if they were but shadows themselves. One stepped far enough forward
that he saw it clearly; the body of a wizened old woman, all bone and flabby
skin, topped with the head of a drooling hound. It knelt down beside Raena's
piled clothing and fingered the edge of her cloak while it watched Raena sway