"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 01 - The Black Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

in the air with their wingmates....
They'd never risk their lives to do something because they felt it was right. Perhaps that was the
greatest pity of all; they could not be broken because they had no honor to compromise, no will to
subvert.
The makaar and the gryphons were a study in contrasts, despite the darker mages' obvious attempts
to mimic the Mage of Silence's handiwork. If gryphons were sinuous, graceful storms, makaar were
blustering squalls. The gryphons were bold, intelligent, crafty; the makaar were conditioned to blind
obedience. And one need only ask Skandranon which was the more attractive; he'd likely answer, "I
am."
Vain bird. You'll make a lovely skin on a Commander's wall.
Skandranon breathed deeply behind the line of trees atop the hill; before him was the Pass of Stelvi.
The coming army had stormed it, at the cost of but a few hundred of their soldiers compared to the
thousand of Urtho's garrison. Farther down the pass was the split valley which once supported a thriving
trade-town. Laisfaar was now the army's quarters, and the surviving townsfolk made into servants no
better off than slaves. In the other fork of the valley the commanders had stationed the army's supplies
and creatures, including the sleeping makaar.
They might as well sleep; they did not need to fear sorcerous spying. The army's mages had shielded
the area from magical scrying, and none of Urtho's many attempts to search the valley by spell had
worked. That had left the need for study by stealth—risky at best, suicidal at worst.
Skandranon had, of course, volunteered.
Fly proudly to your doom laughing, vain bird, the best of the best; more suitors than sense,
more wealth than wisdom, sharp claws ready to dig your own funeral pit....
His meeting with Urtho had been brief by choice. The offer was made to send guards and mages;
Skandranon declined. Urtho offered to bolster his defensive spells, as he had done so many times before;
it was declined as well. What Skan asked for was enhancement of his magical senses—his Mage-sight
had been losing sharpness of late due to disuse. Urtho had smiled and granted it, and Skandranon left
immediately from the Tower itself, leaping broad-winged onto the wind's shivering back.
That was three dozen leagues and four meals ago; a long time to cover such a distance. It was a
tactical disaster for his side that the enemy's army had advanced this close to Urtho's Tower; now it
appeared they were prepared to march on the Tower itself. The layout of the encampments showed
three separate cadres of troops; the makaar had been assigned equally to two of them. And between
those two was the Weaponsmaster's coach, staked firmly and blanketed, flanked by two
canvas-covered wagons.
Hold a moment now. With a town nearby—hearths and comfortable bedding—the
Weaponsmaster is staying in a tent?
Each side in this war had Seers and Diviners, whose powers could throw secret plans, however
perfectly laid, awry. A Seer waking with a premonition of an assassination could thwart the attempt, for
instance. The night before Stelvi Pass was taken, a Seer's vision told of a horrible new weapon that
would devastate the garrison Urtho had placed there. It was something magical, the woman had said, but
was in the hands of common soldiers. That warning alone was enough to make the gryphon wary, and
had made him determined to explore this valley.
In a war of mages, the limited number of Adepts and Masters made tactical planning easier; you
could study your opponents, guess their resources, even identify them by their strategies without ever
seeing the commander himself. What alarmed Skandranon was the idea that the power of a mage could
be put in the hands of untrained people—those who did not have the innate powers or learned skills of a
mage. The units that could be fielded with such weapons would be an unwelcome variable, difficult to
guard against if at all. A Master could ride onto a battlefield and call on his own powers, unleashing
firebolts, lightning, hurricanes of killing wind—yet he was still just one man, and he could be eliminated.
But soldiers that could do that would be devastating, even if the weapons were employed but once each.
And if an Adept had discovered a way for the weapons to draw on power from magical nodes—