"Katherine Kurtz - Deryni 2 - Deryni Checkmate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

You For JOHN G. NELSON
who, like the Deryni, strives to hold back the darkness-of whatever kind.
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright (c) 1972 by Katharine Kurtz
ISBN 0-345-29224-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: May 1972 Seventh Printing: May 1980


DERYNI CHECKMATE

CHAPTER ONE
Three things there are which defy prediction: a woman's whims, the touch of
the Devil's finger, and the weather of Gwynedd in March.
St. Veneric, Triads

MARCH HAS long been a month of storms in the Eleven Kingdoms. It brings the
snow sweeping down from the great northern sea to layer a last coat of winter
on the silver mountains, to seethe and swirl around the high plateaus of the
east until it finally funnels across the great Gwynedd plain and turns to
rain.
March is a fickle month at best. It is the last stand of winter against the
coming spring, but it is also harbinger of the greening, of the floods which
yearly inundate the central lowlands. It has been known to be mild though not
recently. Still, it is spring close enough for men to dare hope that winter
might end early this year; it has, on occasion.
But those who know the ways of Gwynedd do not build their dreams on the chance
of an early spring. For they have learned through hard experience that March
is capricious, often cruel, and never, never to be trusted.
March in the first regnal of King Kelson of Gwynedd was to be no exception.
Nightfall had come early in Kelson's capital at Rhemuth. It often did in
March, when- the northern storms rolled in across the Purple March from the
north and east.
This particular storm had struck at midday, pelting the brightly canopied
stalls and shops of the market square with hail the size of a man's thumbnail
and sending merchants and vendors scurrying for cover. Within an hour, all
hope of salvaging the interrupted market day was gone. And so, amidst thunder
and rain and the pungent lightning-smell which the wind carried, the merchants
had reluctantly packed up their sodden wares, closed up their shops, and left.
By dusk, the only people to be found on the rainswept streets were those whose
business compelled them to be out on such a night- city watchmen on their
rounds, soldiers and messengers on official errands-, citizens scurrying
through the wind and cold to the warm hearthsides of their homes.
Now, as darkness fell and the great cathedral bells in the north of the city
rang Evensong, sleet and rain whined through the narrow, deserted streets of
Rhemuth, slashing at the red-tiled roofs and cupolas and filling the cobble-
lined gutters to overflowing. Behind rain-blurred windowpanes, the flames of
countless evening candles shivered and danced whenever a gust of wind managed
to force its way through cracks in wooden doors and shutters. And in houses