"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 07 - The magic Engineer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

VI

"THERE ARE NO great weather-wizards on Recluce now. Not like Creslin."
A thin man in white shakes his head. "Was he as great as the records say? Destroying an entire
Hamorian fleet?"
"That was before he really got going," snaps a heavier man in the first row. "Check the older
histories. Especially about the weather."
"Don't play games with the youngster," croaks another voice. "Just tell him."
"You tell him, Fiedner."
"It is so simple, young master wizard," croaks the dried-out wizard called Fiedner. "So simple,
and so complex. Three centuries past, the Council included Blacks. Not many, to be sure, for the
Whites looked down upon the Blacks. And the magic of order is more complex and less directly
powerful than that of chaos. Or so everyone thought until Creslin walked off the Roof of the
World."
"He was real?"
"Aye, that he was. Real enough to change a White witch into an order-master near as great as
he. Real enough to destroy scores of ships sent against him. Real enough to turn Kyphros into the
hot desert it is today, and northern Spidlar into a cold and snowy wilderness. Real enough to turn
Recluce from a desert into a garden island."
The young man shakes his head. "Folk tales! Nonsense!" Fire flares from his fingers-not just
red-tinged white, but a flame like a blade that saws a chunk out of one of the granite columns
bordering the chamber.
Clunk...
"Folk tales, they are. But you're here today because Creslin lived then."
"Explain," demands the slim young man with the sunlike eyes and white hair.
"The Balance is real. Aye, real, and you disregard it at your peril. Jenred the Traitor never
believed in the Balance, and we have paid and paid for that ignorance. In Creslin's time, chaos
dominated, and the Balance was forced to find a focus. The Blacks manipulated the focus into
creating Creslin, and they had him trained outside of Fairhaven."
"Westwind? That much is verifiable."
"It is what is not verifiable that concerns you, Jeslek. Creslin was order-bound, but trained
as a Westwind senior guard. That meant more then. Along the way, even before he attained his
powers, he killed an entire bandit troop singlehandedly, and three or four squads of White Road
Guards. Oh, and he could sing almost as well as the legendary Werlynn."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"It saved his ass when magic wasn't enough. You had better learn the same," cackles the old
voice.
"Bah!" The voice cuts nearly as deeply as the chaos fire of the speaker. "Not even the Blacks
of Kyphros could stop me."
"They are not the Blacks of Recluce."
The words hang for a time in the air.
"Who said that?"
But no voice owns the statement, and in time Jeslek sheathes his fires and steps into the
twilight outside the chamber, walking along the never-dark, white-lit streets of Fairhaven toward


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the old city center.