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

warrior-king.
But he certainly noticed the changes that followed.
Kaled'a'in and other "foreigners" throughout Predain were suddenly subject to more and more
restrictions: where they could go, what they could do, even what they were permitted to wear. Inside the
College or out of it, wherever he went he was the subject of taunts, and once or twice, even physical
attacks.
By then, the teachers at the College were apologetic, even fearful of what was going on in the
greater world; they protected him in their own way, but the best they could do was to confine him to the
College and its grounds. And they were bewildered; they had paid no attention to "Ma'ar and his ruffians"
and now it was too late to do anything about them. Intellectual problems they understood, but a problem
requiring direct action left them baffled and helpless.
And in that, how unlike Urtho they were!
The restrictions from outside continued, turning him into a prisoner within the walls of the College.
He stopped getting letters from his family. He was no longer allowed to send letters to them.
I was only fifteen! How could I know what to do?
Then he heard the rumors from the town, overheard from other students frightened for themselves.
Ma'ar's men were "deporting" the "foreigners" and taking them away, and no one knew where. Ill,
terrified, and in a panic, he had done the only thing he could think of when the rumors said Ma'ar's men
were coming to the College to sift through the ranks of students and teachers alike for more "decadent
foreigners."
He ran away that very night with only the clothes on his back, the little money he had with him, and
the food he could steal from the College kitchen. In the dead of winter, he fled across country, hiding by
day, traveling by night, stealing to eat, all the way back to Therium. He spent almost a week in a fevered
delirium, acting more like a crazed animal than the moody but bright young Healer-student he was. He
was captured by town police twice, and escaped from them the first time by violence, the second time by
trickery.
Before he was halfway home, his shoes, made for town streets, had split apart, leaving his feet
frozen and numb while he slogged across the barren countryside. He had stolen new shoes from
farmhouse steps, hearing more of the rumors himself as he eavesdropped on conversations in taverns and
kitchens. Then, from many of his hiding places, he saw the reality. Ma'ar was eliminating anyone who
opposed his rule—and anyone who might oppose war with the neighboring lands. He had mastered the
army, and augmented it with officers chosen from the ranks of his followers. Ma'ar intended to strike
before his neighbors had any warning of his intentions.
Ma'ar was making himself an emperor.
And at home, indeed, as the students had said—all the "foreigners" were being rounded up and
taken away. Sick with fear and guilt, Amberdrake hid in the daylight hours in an abandoned house with a
broken-down door. Ma'ar's troopers had been there first, and when night came, he took whatever food
he found there and continued his flight.
Looting the bones of the lost. May they forgive me.
It would have been a difficult journey for an adult with money and some resources, with experience.
It was a nightmare for Amberdrake. The bulk of his journey lay across farmlands, forests, grazing lands.
Most of the time, he went hungry and slept in ditches and under piles of brush. Small wonder that when
he stumbled at last into Therium, he burned with fever again and was weak and nauseous with starvation.
I came home. And I found an empty house, in a city that was in a panic. Ma'ar's troops were a
day behind me.
No one knew what had become of his family. No one cared what became of him.
He found the neighbors preparing to evacuate, piling their wagon high with their possessions. They
had no time for him, these folk who had called themselves "friends," and who had known him all his life.
I begged them to tell me where my family was. I went to my knees and begged with tears
pouring down my face. I knelt there in the mud and horse dung and falling snow and pleaded with