Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon. Janny Wurts

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СКАЧАТЬ that also hit below the belt.

      While Lysaer gaped, paralysed, she attacked first. “I did not burn by your hand, as you see, and nothing between us is finished, yet.”

      Lysaer twisted his vulnerable features away. Not fast enough: twice shamed as the force of his anguish unmanned him, he had no way to silence her or any word to fend off her analysis of his weaknesses.

      “At least you should know why you failed,” Daliana pursued. “The rage that turned Desh-thiere’s curse against me was no fault of your character. Your demise was set up. In fact, you fell prey to the tricks of the Koriathain.”

      But excuses were empty. Nothing relieved the responsible ethic demanded of his royal upbringing. His short-falls and his privacy were subject to no one’s ruthless dissection, far less any female bent on interference. Once laid open by Talith, and after the inexcusable pretence of his political marriage to Ellaine, Lysaer s’Ilessid brooked no exception. The merciful woman would withdraw as a kindness; likewise, the stout-hearted one plunged beyond her depth.

      But this brazen creature respected no boundaries. Her courage possessed too much gall to salve his beleaguered spirit. The locked pause extended. Coarse with the whisper of breeze through the brush, the grey mantle of nightfall continued to leach the last colour out of the world.

      Yet falling darkness lent cover, at least. Lysaer torqued his facade back into the semblance of equilibrium. His voice was ice, and his nerves, armoured steel, before he tried speech. “I want you gone.”

      Her calm contained the strength to eviscerate. “I won’t oblige. Leave on your own merits.”

      She would not enable a coward’s retreat. Or else she understood him too well and refused the reprieve in his plea for rejection.

      “Hold out in vain, then.” Lysaer gathered himself to arise, shocked by the quiver of atrophied muscle and sun-poisoned nausea. How long had he languished in drugged oblivion at the whim of his self-righteous guardians? Bitter, he wondered if he also suffered withdrawal from an addiction. Dakar knew his herbals. Given a wagon equipped to haul casualties, the slippery spellbinder could have plied him with a war-time stockpile of narcotic remedies.

      Daliana addressed that transparent suspicion, aware that he sorted his appalling infirmity for evidence of further treachery. “You were not dosed with poppy.”

      She extended a hand to him.

      Lysaer stifled a fury that clenched his jaw, brought to his knees by sapped vitality and cruel despair. Pride refused to yield. He hoarded his right to unfettered autonomy and spurned her care though he scrabbled like a dog to buy distance.

      Darkness hid his agony, while the vertigo ebbed. When in due time he commanded himself and used a boulder to claw himself upright, Daliana did not mock or step in to brace up his wracked balance. Instead, she silently offered the bridle of one of her two saddled mounts.

      “If you go, the choice becomes yours alone.” Golden eyes pinned him, direct beyond quarter, though her grasp on the reins trembled with distress. “I will not leave. No matter if you succumb to the curse, or how brutal the provocation, nothing you do, alive in this world, can make me abandon you.”

      Which lashed him to fury and cut him in places too harrowed to bleed in her sight.

      Destroyed, the last shred of control he possessed: Lysaer strove to drive such innocence past the hazard of reckless endangerment. Proximity to him would see her dead, and far worse, unravel the dregs of his self-control that chose not to sully his last, tattered remnant of decency. Once, he had yielded himself to affection, only to endure heart-break great enough to demolish his principles. Never again would he divide his autonomy under the sway of feminine influence. He had cast off both women pledged to him in marriage, turned from them and denounced their memory. The Mistwraith’s fell madness blighted his future, too murderous an affliction for him to sustain.

      Of all the mis-steps with power to wound him, he had lost control: nearly scorched alive the tender innocent pleading to save him. Lysaer rejected the unthinkable liability. He owned no sane means to protect Daliana or spare her from the fate that had destroyed Ellaine and Talith before her.

      Lysaer fought venomous self-revulsion, too choked up for words, even had sickness not wrung him wretched.

      He staggered forward, snatched the reins without touching her. Disability forced him to lean on the hack to stay upright but did not weaken his besieged defences. He clawed himself astride. Shaky and soaked in febrile sweat, he searched the gloaming for Dakar’s campsite. Though no fire burned to draw unfriendly eyes, he picked out the angular bulk of the dray, with the unhitched team tethered nearby. Lysaer turned his mount’s head in the other direction. Then he dug in his heels and set off at a break-neck gallop without a glance backwards.

      Night swallowed him, sultry with the steam vented off the simmering hot springs. He did not slacken pace or guide the horse under him. Reckless, he let his mount’s keener instincts pick the path through treacherous country. Lysaer scarcely cared if he broke his neck. He drove the animal at clattering speed through the craters of hardened caldera, leaped over seams where the rills of old lava flows yawned underfoot. He coughed on the fumes belched from the mud pots, and taunted fate, where the pressurized gush of the geysers seethed in the obsidian shadows. Alone, he need not wrestle to mask the misery of total despair …

      Under the ice-chip glitter of stars, her heart crushed, Daliana sank to her knees. Tears fell for the fracture she could not mend. But she did not sob aloud. Failure preferred the night’s silence since Dakar’s vindictive lecture surely would finish her. How many would come to die in the future lay out of her hands, nor might any measure of sore regret lift the gravity of tonight’s miscalculation. Done was done. She had acted as her intuition directed. No matter how dimmed the hope of Lysaer’s long-term healing, she had turned him loose with his spirit intact.

      Numb to the bite of the volcanic gravel, she bore the disastrous hurt. She renounced self-pity, straightened, and rose, and gathered the reins of the gelding left to her. Unable to face the Mad Prophet just yet, she laid her wet cheek against the animal’s shoulder.

      Lysaer’s cause would not be forsaken. For more than a sealed oath under Asandir’s auspices, she would search the breadth of the five kingdoms for a remedy. “Until I’ve found some way to redeem my liege, before Ath, I will not rest his case.”

      “You are worth ten of him,” a dismissive voice snapped from the darkness.

      Startlement whirled Daliana volte-face and dislodged the hazel twig pinned through her hair. Half-blinded, she clapped a hand to her belt-knife and braced for a defensive throw.

      But the speaker’s stark stillness smothered her impulsive attack.

      “Whatever you say, I promised my liege. Nothing else matters.” She drew herself up though the presence before her radiated the might of a Fellowship Sorcerer. “Kharadmon already forewarned that I pursued Lysaer’s better nature in vain.”

      Her visitor strode forward. Angular and tall, he wore a belted tunic and simple hose. The lean face, brushed in starlight, was graven by absolute confidence; or else smelted by the flame of an arrogance that brooked no impertinent questioning.

      Daliana regarded the dangerous creature last seen in the company of a dragon. The edge had not left him. His attention still blazed like a brand, even cloaked under nightfall.

      Davien said, “I am not here to part СКАЧАТЬ