"Christopher Stasheff - Warlock 13 - Warlock's Last Ride" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

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Stasheff, Christopher – Warlock 13 – Warlock’s Last Ride

Prologue

THE CONCERT MASTER WAVED HIS BOW TO TIE up the last note, and the orchestra fell
silent. Then the organ began its murmur, stumbling now and then, causing Rod to bite his lip.

Gwen placed her hand over his. "Patience, husband. The musician had other matters arising in his
life than practicing these pieces you brought him."

"Considering he'd never seen anything remotely like Bach before, I suppose he's not doing a bad
job," Rod admitted.

They stood at the back of the cathedral in Runnymede, waiting for their entrances.

"Think instead upon how well our sons look."

Rod looked up at the three tall young men standing at the side of the sanctuary, his sons and their
lifelong friend the crown prince, resplendent in cloth-of-gold doublets and gleaming white hose. It had
been difficult prying Gregory out of his usual monk's robe for the occasion, but Gwen had prevailed. At
the thought, the scene blurred, and he saw Gregory as he had been before he fell in love with Allouette
and went on a crash course of bodybuilding: thin and pale, seeming almost anemic.

Then the three young men came back into focus, and Rod marveled how much the lad looked like
his muscular brother, though Gregory was still brown-haired and Geoffrey golden.

As his brother Magnus had been when he was small…

Gwen's hand touched his arm, rested there in reassurance. "I would he were here, too, husband,
healed and beside them—but we must settle for three rings, not four."

Rod covered her hand with his own, still marveling at how clearly she could read his mind—even
without using her telepathic powers. "Just so he's healed some day, dear—and this certainly is reason
enough to set my heart singing."

Nonetheless, the old anger awoke and burned—anger at Finister, the woman who had not merely
broken Magnus's heart with her ferociously powerful psi powers, but mangled it, then done so again and
again in different guises. As always, though, he schooled himself to forgive, for her malice had been the
result of systematic brainwashing and emotional abuse by her foster parents—agents of the futurian
enemies of the royal family who sought to forge Finister into a weapon to be used against the Crown and
its main support, the Gallowglass family, and had succeeded far too well—but Cordelia and Geoffrey
had been proof against her plots, and Gregory, though he had fallen in love with her, had still managed

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