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

most knights - and sent on as well an evil crea-ture more powerful than any man.
Estrella, of an age with him, guided her pony along in silence. Although she could
make no words with her throat and lips, her dark eyes and lively face seemed almost
infinitely expressive and full of light. Behind her rode Master Juwain and Liljana, who
might have been the chil-dren's grandparents. They wore the same hooded traveling
cloaks that we all did, even Atara, who brought up the rear. This beauti-ful woman -
my betrothed - hated the itch of woven wool against her sunburned skin, for she had
lived too long on the plains of the Wendrush with the savage Sarni warriors, who
usually wore silks or beaded skins, when they wore garments at all. She was herself a
warrior, of that strange society of women known as the Manslayers. As she pressed
her knees against the flanks of her great roan mare, Fire, she gripped one of the
great, double-curved Sarni bows. A white blindfold bound her thick blond hair and
covered the hollows beneath her brows. It was a great miracle of her life that
although Morjin had taken her eyes, sometimes by the virtue of her second sight she
could still see. If a bear charged out of the bracken at us, I thought, she could put an
arrow straight through its heart.
'Bears,' I said, turning back toward Maram, 'rarely hunt deer -only if they come upon
one by chance.'
'Like that bear that came upon you?' He pointed at my face and added, 'The one
who gave you that?'
I pressed my finger against the scar cut into my forehead. This mark, shaped like a
lightning bolt, had actually been present from my birth, when the midwife's tongs had
ripped my skin. The bear, who had nearly killed my brother Asaru and me during
one of our forays into the woods, had only deepened it.
'I doubt if it is my fate,' I said, smiling at him, 'to see us attacked here by a bear.'
'Ah, fate,' Maram said, shaking his great, bushy head. 'You speak of it too much
these days, and contemplate it too deeply, I think.'
'Perhaps that is true. But we've avoided the worst that might have befallen us and
come to our journey's end without mishap.'
'Almost to our journey's end,' he said, waving his huge hand at the trees ahead of us.
'If you're right, we've still five miles of these gloomy woods to endure. If you hadn't
insisted on this longcut, we might already have been sitting at Lord Harsha's table
with Behira, putting down some roasted beef and a few pints of your good Meshian
beer.'
I cast him a long, burning look. He knew well enough the reasons for our detour
through the woods, and had in fact agreed upon them. But now that he could almost
smell his dinner and taste his dessert, it seemed that he had conveniently forgotten
them.
'All right, all right,' he said, turning his head away from me to gaze off through the
trees. 'Why indeed take any chances when we have come so far without mishap?
It's just that now I'm ready to enjoy the comforts of Lord Harsha's house, it seems
that the farmland hereabouts - and the rest of your kingdom - surely holds fewer
perils than do these woods.'
'It is not my kingdom,' I reminded him. 'Not yet. And whoever wins Mesh's throne,
you may be sure that this wood will remain near the heart of his realm.'
Far out on the grasslands of the Wendrush, as we had taken meat and fire with the
chieftain of the Niuriu, Vishakan, we had heard disquieting rumors that Mesh's
greatest lords were contending with each other to gain my father's vacant throne.
War, it seemed, threatened. Vishakan himself told me that Morjin had stolen the
souls of some of my own countrymen - and had turned the hearts of others with