"Janny Wurts - Pass Of Orlon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

bear.
Busy scooping ice from the enamelled ewer of wash-water, and striving
to rise above low spirits, Lysaer regarded the sleeping prophet with a mix of
laughter and distaste. 'If he weren't apprenticed to a sorcerer he would have
made a splendid royal fool.'
'What a curse to lay on a king,' Arithon observed from the comer where,
stripped down to his hose, he spread out his blankets on bare floor. A
cockroach scurried up from a crack near his foot; he reacted fast enough to
crush it, changed his mind and let it race to safety under the baseboard.
'Not mentioning that every princess within reach would have her bottom
pinched to bruises.'
Lysaer splashed frigid water on his face, gasped and groped for his shirt,
that being the nearest cloth at hand; the innkeeper was too stingy to
provide towels. The prince charred his half-brother, 'I'd say that upbringing
by mages left you cynical.'
By now half-muffled under bedclothes, Arithon said in startled serious-
ness, 'Of course not.'
Lysaer rested his chin on his fists and his damply crumpled shirt.
Statesman enough to guess that the meat of the matter sprang from
Arithon's ilbstarred heirship of Karthan, and not eased that the thrust of
s'Ffalenn wiles now bent toward contention with Asandir, he gently
shifted the subject. 'Well, the loss of your roots doesn't bother you much.'
One corner of Arithon's mouth twitched. After a moment, the expres-
sion resolved to a smile. 'If it takes sharing confidences to prove that you're
wrong, there was one young maid. I was never betrothed, as you were.
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 Wurts, Janny - Pass Of Orlon.TXT
Sithaer, I barely so much as kissed her. I think she was as frightened of my
shadows as I was of telling her my feelings.'
'Perhaps you'll find your way back to her.' The wind whined mournfully
through the cracks in the shutters and a draft stole through the small room;
touched by the chill, Lysaer shrugged. 'At least, we could ask Asandir to
return us to Dascen Elur once we've defeated the Mistwraith.'
'No.' Arithon rolled over, his face turned unreadably to the wall.
'Depend on the fact that he won't.'
'You found out something in Erdane, didn't you,' Lysaer said. But his
accusation dangled unanswered. Rebuffed and alone with his thoughts,
and hating the fate that left him closeted at the whim of a sorcerer in the
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fusty lodgings of a second rate roadside tavern, he shook out his damp shirt
and blew out the candle for the night.
Two days later the riders in Asandir's party reached Standing Gate, a rock
formation that spanned the road in a lopsided natural arch. Centaurs in past
ages had carved the flanking columns into likenesses of the twins who
founded their royal dynasty. Since before the memory of man the granite had
resisted erosion: the Kings Halmein and Adon reared yet over the highway,
their massive, majestic forelegs upraised in the mist and their beards and
maned backs stained the verdigris of old bronze with blooms of lichen.
Mortal riders could not pass beneath their shadow without experiencing a