"Recluce - 09 - Colors Of Chaos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

luxurious-until he had seen Leyladin's house.
   "What do you think?" asked Leyladin as she stood by the door.
   "About what? Your father? He cares a great deal for you."
   "Cerryl. You are as dense as that mule my father mentioned." A smile
followed the words, but one that held concern, and her green eyes, dark
in the dim light of the polished bronze lamps, fixed his.
   He took a deep breath. "I don't know what to think. I could say
pleasant things, and I would, to anyone but you. Right now ... I'm ...
overwhelmed. I grew up an orphan in a two-room house. It was clean, but
my pallet was on the stone floor, and my uncle felt lucky if he could
grub a good piece of malachite and sell it for a silver once every few
eight-days. I went to work in a mill not much past my tenth year, and I
was lucky to have a pearapple to eat once or twice a year. Those noodles
tonight-they were wonderful, but they probably used more pearapples than
I've eaten in my whole life. I've never had good wine from bottles."
   "Cerryl... I know that. I've known that from the beginning, but I
couldn't keep pretending that I wasn't different." She reached out and
touched his cheek. "With you ... I don't want to pretend."
   "That means more than you know." He offered a smile.
   "I think I know that." She bent forward and brushed his cheek with her
lips. "Good night. I'll see you soon."
   As he walked through the night, through the light gusts of cold wind,
through the intermittent snowflakes with the slight headache he'd almost
forgotten, his thoughts swirled like the snow. What happened next? Could
anything happen? Jeslek, Sterol, and Anya had all cautioned him again
consorting with a Black. Yet Leyladin was a healer who was mostly Black,
and he was a White mage-perhaps at best a White mage fringing toward
gray. He repressed a slight shiver at that. No one liked gray mages,
neither the White mages of Fairhaven nor the Black Order mages of Recluce.
   He and Leyladin could hold hands... but how much more? Was she worried
about that? Was that why she kept a certain distance?
   He frowned as he kept walking. Her kiss had been warm, but not
order-chaos conflict warm.
 
 
V
 
Cerryl stretched, standing in the sun of the small guardhouse porch, glad
that spring had returned. Even the hills in the distance were showing
signs of full greening.
   He sat down on the backed stool provided for him, just high enough to
be able to see over the granite rampart. He kept his eyes open but
concentrated on focusing the chaos energy of the sun into an ever-tighter
line of pure chaos-something like a light lance, but no thicker than his
index finger.
   Whst! The barely audible hiss followed as the narrow line of golden
fire cut into the granite at the bottom of the rampart, drilling into the
hard stone. White dust oozed out onto the walkway.
   Cerryl released the light dagger-or whatever it might be-and sat there
quietly, sweating, although the day was not that warm, trying to cool off