"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 11 - The Fire Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

commoners, do they?’

‘It looks as if the ones here did. The next time Maryn holds a full
council I’ll remember this. I always wonder what he’s like when there are
no women around. He must be quite different.’

‘One would hope.’

Bellyra laughed, and not very decorously, either. There was a time
when that jest would have wounded her to the heart, she realized. Maddyn
grinned at her.

‘Now the real question,’ she went on, ‘is when this passage was built.
I’ve not found a thing about it in the records, which makes sense, of
course. They could hardly keep it secret if they talked about it. But then, I
wonder who did the building?’
 ‘Perhaps the king had them slain afterwards.’

‘Ych! I hope not. Although-’ Bellyra paused, thinking. ‘Nevyn has an
ancient book called TALES OF THE DAWN-TIME. According to that,
the earliest brochs in Deverry weren’t built with proper floors and
chambers and suchlike. They had double walls, with a good-sized space
between them, you see, and they were empty like a chimney in the centre,
because there would only be one big fire at the bottom to keep everyone
warm. And in those double walls were little rooms and some sort of
corridor called galleries.’

‘I see. This passage could be a remnant of a gallery, then. The heart of
Dun Deverry’s very old, after all.’

‘Just so, and then the only thing the later king would have had to add
would have been this door. And he might have been able to have that
made secretly, if he paid the mason enough.’

‘True-spoken. And especially if the mason were as close-mouthed as
Otho, say.’

‘Quite so. I wonder if our pages have had enough exploring in there? I
hate to admit this, Maddo, but I’m tired and I want to sit down.

Maddyn called to the boys, and in a few moments they hurried out.
Cobwebs glistened in their hair.

‘There’s a little staircase at the end, your highness,’ Vertyc said. ‘But it
doesn t go up to anything.’

‘Unless it’s a false floor,’ his brother, Tanno, joined in, ‘but it would
make ever so much noise to find out.

‘We d best wait till the prince s council isn’t in session, then,’ Bellyra