"David Zindell - Ea Cycle 04 - The Diamond Warriors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

soft silver. So it was with my dead-white flesh: the warm spring air thawed my face
and hands with a hot pain that flushed my skin. Master Juwain held his green crystal
over me to help the healing along. Soon I found that I could open and close my
fingers at will, and I did not worry that they would rot with gangrene and have to be
cut off. But forever after, I knew, I would feel the Ahrim's terrible coldness burning
through me, even as I did the kirax in my blood.
A sudden gleam of my sword gave me to see a truth to which I had been blind. And
I said to Alphanderry, with much anger, 'You do know things about the Ahrim, don't
you? It has some-thing to do with the Skadarak, doesn't it?'
At the mention of this black and blighted wood at the heart of Acadu, Alphanderry
hung his head in shame. And then he found the courage to look at me as he said, 'It
was there, waiting.- Val. During our passage, it attached itself to you. It has been
following you ever since.'
'Following!' I half-shouted. 'All the way to Hesperu. and back, to the Brotherhood's
school? And then here, to my home? Why could I not ice it? And why could
Abrasax not see it - he who can see almost everything?'
Again, Alphanderry shrugged his shoulders.
'But how is it,' I demanded, 'that you can see it?'
It was Daj who answered for him. He passed his hand through Alphanderry's
watery-like form, and said, 'But how not, since they are made of the same
substance!'
Master Juwain regarded the glimmering tones that composed Alphanderry's being.
He said, 'Similar, perhaps, but certainly not the same.'
I waved my hand at such useless speculations, and I called out to Alphanderry, 'But
why did you never tell me of this thing?'
The look on his face was that of a boy stealing back to his room after dark. He said
to me simply, 'I didn't want to worry you, Val.'
'Oh, excellent, excellent!' Maram muttered, shaking his head. 'Well, I am worried
enough for all of us, now. What I wonder is why that filthy Ahrim, whatever it is,
attacked us here? And more important, what will keep it away?'
But none of us, not even Alphanderry, had an answer to these questions. As it was
growing late, it seemed the best thing we could do would be to leave these strange
woods behind us as soon as possible.
'Come,' I said, clapping Maram on the shoulder. 'Let's go get some of that roast
beef and beer you've been wanting for so long.'
After that, I pulled myself up onto Altaru's back, and my friends mounted their
horses, too. I pointed the way toward Lord Harsha's farm with all the command and
assurance that I could summon. But as we rode off through the shadowed trees, I
felt the dark thing called the Ahrim still watching me and still waiting, and I knew with
heaviness in my heart that it would be no easy task for me to become king.


Chapter 2
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We came out of the woods with the late sun touching the farmland of the Valley of
the Swans with an emerald blaze. To the west, the three great mountains, Telshar,
Arakel and Vayu, rose up as they always had with their white-capped peaks pointing
into the sky. Lord Harsha's large stone house stood framed against the sacred