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

people tried to smuggle things past the gates-at least things made of
metal. Cerryl knew his senses couldn't always distinguish spices from a
wagon's wood or cloth. Leyladin, the blonde gray/Black mage who was the
Hall's healer, might have been able to do that, but most White mages
couldn't. But even the least talented White mage could sense metal
through a cubit of solid wood.
   He shook his head, fearing he knew the answer. The Guild kept its
secrets, kept them well. Cerryl still recalled the fugitive who'd been
turned to ashes by a Guild mage when Cerryl had been a mill boy for
Dylert, watching through a slit in a closed lumber barn door.
   As Diborl supervised, another guard brought out the two prisoners on
cleanup detail to sweep away the ashes that remained of the wagon. Every
morning one of the duty patrols brought out prisoners for cleanup detail,
usually men who'd broken the peace somehow, but not enough to warrant
road duty.
   Cerryl rubbed his forehead, then turned and glanced at the western
horizon. The sun was well above the low hills, well above, and the gates
didn't close until full dark. Luckily, it was winter, and sunset came
earlier. He couldn't imagine how long the duty day must be in the summer,
and he wasn't looking forward to it.
   The overmage Kinowin had told him that he would do gate duty, on and
off, for a season or two every year for the first several years he was a
full mage, perhaps longer-unless the Guild had another need for him. But
what other need might the Guild have? Or what other skills could he
develop? He definitely had no skills with arms or with the depths of the
earth, as did Kinowin and Eliasar and Jeslek. And he wasn't a chaos
healer, like Broka. The Guild didn't need mage scriveners, his only real
skill.
   So he could look forward to two or three years of watching wagons, to
see who was trying to avoid paying road duties? Or trying to smuggle iron
weapons or fine cloth or spices into the city?
   He turned and paced back across the walkway, then returned, hoping the
sun would set sooner than was likely. His eyes flickered toward the empty
and cold highway, a highway that would have seemed warmer, much warmer,
had Leyladin been anywhere nearer.
   Yet even thinking of Leyladin didn't always help. She was a healer,
and he was a White mage, and Black and White didn't always work out. Some
Whites couldn't even touch Blacks without physical pain for both. He'd
held her hands, but that was all. Would that be all?
   He paced back across the porch again, almost angrily.
 
 
II
 
...In time, as the winds shifted, and as the rains fell less upon Candar,
and as the fair grasslands of Kyphros turned into high desert, and as the
Stone Hills came to resemble the furnaces wherein metal is forged, others
in the rest of the world came also to understand the dangers posed by the
Black Isle.
   Even the Emperor of far Hamor dispatched his fleets unto the Gulf of