"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 11 - The Death of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

autarch."
"How did you know?"
She shrugged, turned, and motioned to Weldein and Freyda and two others I didn't know. Weldein
grinned at me, and I gave him an exaggerated shrug.
As I turned back to the shop, I wondered, not for the first time, how anything could be kept a
secret in Kyphros. Inside, I took a fresh cloth and dipped it into the finish and began to rub it
into the wood. "Rub" is really the wrong term, because there's almost no pressure involved. The
finish I had cooked up was thin and took a long time to dry. I needed to apply several coats, but
the eventual result was a hard, but almost invisible coat-without magic-and that was what I'd
wanted with the wardrobe, because the doors generally took a beating.
The inlaid design glistened and seemed to stand out from the dark wood. Inlay work was, for me,
the hardest part. Not the grooving or the channels in the base wood-that was a matter of patience
and care-but the creation of the inlay pieces themselves. The grain has to add to the design and
not just appear as though it had been stuck there any old way. I also tended to make my inlays a
shade deeper, but that meant ensuring that the base wood was fractionally thicker to avoid
sacrificing strength.
The design was a variation on the autarch's flag-an olive branch crossed with a blade-golden
oak set in the base, black oak on the panel above the doors. That was it-nothing else to mar the
smooth finish of the piece. That sort of work is tricky, because any flaw is instantly noticed.
Errors in more elaborate inlays often aren't seen.
I was probably extra sensitive to flaws in woodworking, and in wood, because one little flaw
when I was working as an apprentice for my uncle Sardit had gotten me exiled from Recluce, carted
across the Eastern Ocean and dumped in Candar to discover the "truth" of order, with only a staff,
except it was a special staff, bound in order and black iron. Because I was a potential order-
master, one of the so-called blackstaffers, no one had told me much, and I had gotten into more
and more trouble. I'd been chased out of Freetown, chased out of Hrisbarg, and generally on the
run across Eastern Candar until I ran into Justen. Then, I'd thought he was just a gray wizard,
and I was glad to be his apprentice. It took me more than a year to find out he was my uncle-and
well over two centuries old. So I'd ridden with Justen, almost gotten possessed by one of the
white wizards bound centuries earlier in the ruins of Frven. Justen saved me there, and then had


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taught me how to heal sheep, and a few other things. Nothing went quite as planned. I'd rescued
and healed a street slut in Jellico. That hadn't been such a good idea, because all unlicensed
healing there was forbidden, and I'd had to leave Justen and, once again, ride for my life,
heading west across Candar.
Eventually, I'd gotten through the Easthorns--through storms and snows in those towering
mountains-and made my way to Fenard-the capital of Gallos. I actually found a place with a
woodworker, old Destrin, and got back to working wood. There I lasted about a year before I did
something else stupid-I infused some chairs we made with extra order. The extra order reacted with
the chaos in the Prefect's officers, and some were burned. That meant I had to leave Gallos, but
not until I'd found a suitable match for Destrin's daughter Deirdre.
At that point, Gallos and Kyphros were fighting an ugly war, fomented and fueled by Antonin,
one of the nastier white wizards I'd ever had the displeasure of running across. I'd found out
that Krystal had joined the forces of the autarch of Kyphros. So I went to Kyphrien, the capital
of Kyphros, to see if I could help, although my skills were certainly weak compared to those of
Antonin.