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

weeping all at once. Evandar raised his arms and shouted for silence. Slowly
the babble died.
'Well and good, then,' Evandar said. 'Spring you shall have.'
In his mind he visualized a gigantic silver horn, and in the Lands what
Evandar saw appeared for all to see. His folk gasped and moved back to give
him room as the horn floated into the air, an apparition the size of a horse
and wagon. Through it Evandar called down the astral light. He saw it as a
golden surge of raw power that flowed through the horn's tip and spread out
across the meadowlands and into the river. Suddenly the air turned warm; the
grass sprang up green; the trees burst into full leaf. On the river bank a
cloth-of-gold pavilion sprang into existence.
'Let us feast,' Evandar cried out. 'Let us have music!'
The crowd laughed, calling out his name and cheering him. Yet once they were
settled at their feasting, Evandar slipped out of the pavilion. He ran a few
steps across the grass, let his elven form dissolve, and as a red hawk he
sprang into the air. As he flew in a vast spiral over the river and meadows,
he called down the astral light in a hawk's harsh voice.
Below him snow melted, and grass sprang up, green and lush. Flowers bloomed in
an instant, dotting the lawns with white and yellow. In every direction, as
far as he could see with a hawk's long sight, Spring returned, laughing. The
hawk cried out once, then broke from his spiral and flew steadily toward the
forest at the meeting of the worlds. Shaetano was hiding somewhere, most
likely in the part of the Lands that had once been his. Evandar intended to
find him.
Down in Deverry, the same storm that was casting its etheric shadow over
Evandar's Lands raged over the northern territories. For three days snow
trapped Dun Cengarn in a cage of white. The gwerbret's men spent their days in
the great hall near the two huge hearths and their ever-burning fires, though
they made brief forays into the stables to tend their horses. Some even
brought their blankets from the barracks and slept on the straw with the
servants.
Rhodry stayed mostly among the company of Prince Daralanteriel's escort of ten
elven archers, the last of the large troop he'd assembled for the past
summer's war. With provisions so scarce at Cengarn, the prince had sent the
rest of them home long before. Even though his kingdom lay in ruins in the
mountains of the far west, by Deveny standards royal blood still ran in Dar's
veins, and he ate and sat at the honour table with Gwerbret Cadmar. Protocol,
however, seated his men among the warband, under the captaincy of a
pale-haired archer named Vantalaber.
Since the cold draughts bothered the Westfolk men less than it did the human
members of Gwerbret Cadmar's warband, they took the table nearest the back
door - they were farther from the human stink that way, too, as the archers
often remarked. Just like the human men, they diced to pass their time,
although the elven game was a fair bit more complex. Each player took a
handful of brightly-coloured wood pieces - cubes and pyramids both - shook
them hard, then strewed them in a rough line. Counting the points amounted to
another game in itself, with a lot of argument and token cursing from the
other players. At times during these sessions one or another man from the
warband would stroll over to the elven tables and watch their game, but they
never asked to join, and no one invited them, either.