"Rebecca Neason - 13th Scroll 02 - The Truest Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Neason Rebecca)

woman walking alone, save for the wolf’s company. There could have been danger behind
every tree or around any bend in the road.
Instead, she had encountered only honesty and beauty as she traveled. When she did
reach Ballinrigh and faced the one truly dangerous moment of her journey, the place of
sanctuary at hand contained the one person she needed to find. If those two men had not
tried to attack and rob her— gaining only the protective fury of a wolf for their troubles—
she might have wandered the streets of Ballinrigh until, money gone, she was forced to
abandon her search without ever finding Renan or discovering why she was there.
But she had found Renan. He alone, of all the city’s inhabitants, had known what she
did not—who she was and the purpose behind her presence there. He revealed to
Lysandra the Thirteenth Scroll of Tambryn and explained to her what it meant. But that
was not the greatest gift he had brought to her life. Although it seemed so at the time,
Lysandra now knew that what Renan had truly given her was love.
Somewhere, somewhen, along their difficult journey, helpful stranger had turned to
friend—and friendship had blossomed into that rarest flower of true and everlasting love.
The dark wall behind which she had hidden the deepest part of herself, where she had
once believed it would and must always remain, had crumbled bit by bit.
But the pieces, so long in place, had not come easily down. It was not until she had to
battle her way back from the depths of dark magic cast by their enemy, back into the
light of rife again, that she had finally let the wall around her heart tumble. Within the
Light that had become her chosen reality, no Darkness—of magic or of serf—could
survive.
But Renan was still a priest; the love Lysandra felt for and from him would remain
unspoken. Lysandra told herself that did not matter. Love existed—and the friendship,
which they could share, was all the deeper for it.
There were other places and people through whom her healing had come. There was
Eiddig, the aged Guide and leader of the Cryf, the forgotten beings who lived in their
wondrous Realm beneath Aghamore’s mountains and whose souls were as beautiful as
their appearance was strange. Their name meant the Strong, and that is what they
were— possessed of amazing strength in their compact, hair-covered bodies and, above
all, strong in their belief of the One whom they called simply the Divine.
No one had demonstrated this strength more surely than Talog, the young
City-Guide-in-Training who had left the underground-Rearm to travel with Lysandra
and Renan as they searched for Selia. While all of the Cryf had impressed Lysandra with
the faith and the compassion that created their amazing, harmonious society, none had
done more than Talog. Terrified to travel Upworld, as the Cryf called the surface land of
Aghamore, and in physical pain from the brightness of the sun he had never before seen,
Talog had proved himself invaluable time and again. Lysandra knew they would never
have succeeded in finding or getting Selia to safety without him.
And there was Selia herself. She, too, had helped heal Lysandra in ways the older
woman was still discovering. Both the Thirteenth Scroll of Tambryn and the Holy Words
of the Cryf named Selia the Font of Wisdom. When their minds had touched that first
time, Selia’s own gifts—unrecognized and unwanted by the girl—had served as a catalyst
to unlock Lysandra’s undiscovered potential. Together, they had been able to banish the
Darkness that had so nearly destroyed Lysandra and bring her back into life again.
It was then that Lysandra’s Sight, that wondrous inner vision that had allowed her to
live and function as a healer through all the long years of solitude, had blossomed. But for
nearly ten years, her Sight had come and gone of its own accord, and though she had
learned to use it, she could find no way to control it.
Nor was what the Sight revealed the same as physical vision. There were moments