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

saving this bottle for you for at least a thousand miles.'
'Thank you,' Lord Harsha said, holding up the bottle to the room's candles. Then,
with a wry smile, he asked, 'Will you help me drink it?'
After Behira had retrieved some cups from the adjacent great room and Lord Harsha
had poured a bit of brandy into each, I gave them presents, too. For Behira I had
silk bags full of rare spices: anise, pepper, cardamom, clove. To Lord Harsha I gave
a simple steel throwing knife. He hefted it in his rough hands and promised to add it
to his collection of swords, knives, maces, halberds and other weapons mounted on
the wall of his great room. When I told him the story behind the knife, he sat looking
at me and shaking his head.
'This was Kane's, and he wanted you to have it,' I said to him. 'When we were made
captive in King Arsu's encampment, one of Morjin's High Priests made Kane cast
the knife at Estrella and split an apple placed on top of her head.'
Lord Harsha's hand closed around the knife's handle as he regarded Estrella in
amazement - and concern.
But Estrella remained nearly motionless nibbling on a gooey cherry that she had
plucked from a slice of pie. Her large, dark eyes filled with a strange light. In the
past, she had suffered greater torments than that which the Kallimun priest, Arch
Uttam, had inflicted on her. It was her grace, however, to dwell in the present, most
of the time, and here and now she seemed to be happy just sitting safe and sound
with those she loved.
'Well, you have stories to tell,' Lord Harsha called out, 'and we must hear them. Let's
drink a toast to your safe return from wher-ever it was that the stars called you.'
So saying, he lifted up his cup, and we all joined him in drinking Maram's brandy.
'All right,' he said, 'it's clear that you haven't come home just to see Maram happily
wed to my daughter.'
It came time to give an account of our journey. I said that we had set forth into the
wilds of Ea on a quest to find the Maitreya. Many parts of our story I could not
relate, or did not want to. It wouldn't do for Lord Harsha - or anyone - to learn the
location of the Brotherhood's school or of the greatest of the gelstei crys-tals that
they kept there. Of the terrible darkness I had found within myself in our passage of
the Skadarak I kept silent, although I did speak of the Black Jade buried in the earth
there and how this evil thing called out to capture one's soul. Likewise I did not want
to have to explain to Behira that the round scars marking Maram's cheek and body
had been torn into him by the teeth of a monstrous woman called Jezi Yaga.
Nothing, however, kept me from telling of our journey through the Red Desert and
crossing of the hellish and uncrossable Tar Harath. Behira listened in wonder-ment
to the story of the little people's magic wood hidden in the burning sands of the
world's worst wasteland - and how this Vild, as we called it, had quickened
Alphanderry's being so that he could speak and dwell almost as a real man. She
wanted to hear more of the Singing Caves of Senta than I could have related in a
month of evenings. At last though, I had to move on to our nightmarish search
through Hesperu: nearly the darkest and worst of all the Dragon kingdoms. It was
there, I told Behira and her father, in a village called Jhamrul, that we had come
across a healer named Bemossed.
'With a laying on of his hand,' I said to Lord Harsha, 'he healed a wound to Maram's
chest that even Master Juwain could not heal. In Bemossed gathers all that is best
and brightest in men. It is almost certain that he is the Maitreya.'
Lord Harsha sipped his brandy as he looked at me. He said, 'Once before you
believed another was the Maitreya.'