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

were gone, vanished in an instant. She closed her mouth and cocked her head, listening with a sense far
more acute than mere ears and caught only fading chuckles, scraps of conversation. The Wee Folk
seemed quite reassured now.

It was maddening, not to say insulting. There is, after all, something deflating about others deciding
you're no threat.

THERE WERE HORSES waiting, so the Gallowglasses and their spouses rode out of the
woodlands to the house that stood in the meadow beyond. Magnus drew rein in surprize. "They have
come back to the cottage, then?"

Some cottage! Alea thought, mouth curving with irony. It was two stories tall with dormers peeking
out from an attic, half-timbered and stucco-walled, with leaded windows that glowed with the light of a
fire within, and candles on the floor above.

"Mama wanted to come back to the house where we grew up," Cordelia explained softly. "We were
together for years here, after all, before Queen Catharine insisted we take the castle, and in spite of all
the work and the exasperation we caused Mama, she said her happiest memories have soaked into the
timbers of this house."

"I doubt it not," Magnus said softly, and urged his horse forward. "We were only in the castle for
four years, after all, all of us together."

"Together, yes." Cordelia left it unsaid: Before you deserted us, but the sentiment hung in the air,
and Magnus bowed his head as his horse carried him home.

Gregory pushed up beside him, murmuring, "Do not berate yourself, brother. Your absence gave
Geoffrey room to grow."

He did not mention himself, Alea reflected, and could see from the ironic twist to Magnus's mouth
that he realized it, too, though Gregory probably did not.

They dismounted at the door; hostlers appeared out of the shadows to take their horses. Magnus
looked around at them in surprize. "Where are Puck and his kin?"

"About their nightly business, most likely," Gregory answered. "Come in, brother. The candle
burns upstairs, and I doubt not that Papa is awake and watching even if Mama is asleep."



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He opened the door and beckoned. Magnus followed, and it seemed to Alea that a mantle of doom
settled over his shoulders. She stepped toward him automatically, reaching out to reassure, but Cordelia
intercepted her deftly, steering her toward the sitting room and saying, "We must give them some
minutes alone, must we not? Her first-born, after so many years."

"Yes … yes, of course." Alea let herself be led into the sitting room, turned to take a chair by the
hearth, and sat gazing into the flames, mind and heart open to the young giant who walked up the stairs,