Before Winter. Nancy Wallace K.
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Название: Before Winter
Автор: Nancy Wallace K.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Героическая фантастика
isbn: 9780008103606
isbn:
He opened his eyes to a dizzying view of tree trunks and rocks spinning in front of him. He swallowed convulsively and tried to shift to his back to see for himself if perhaps some small part of the repository remained. Nausea rolled over him in waves and he stopped moving and lay very still, half on his side, the way he’d wakened. Minutes passed as the sickness that threatened to overwhelm him finally stilled. He lay stiffly, his teeth clenched, one hand digging into the earth.
Finally, he touched his temple gingerly and found the whole side of his face was caked with a sticky mass of blood, pine needles, and dirt. His hand involuntarily rummaged in his pocket searching for a handkerchief and found it completely empty. Even Marcus’ rosary was gone.
Last night seemed decades ago, when he and Marcus had sat and talked on the banks of the stream, weathering a storm together. What had Marcus told him? “Trust me.” And Devin had. He had trusted Marcus with his life and Marcus had shot him. So, where was his bodyguard now? In some tavern toasting René Forneaux’s bid for chancellorship? Did he regret having shot the current chancellor’s son when he had been sworn to protect him? Or did he accept his new position with the same intensity that he accepted his role as Devin’s bodyguard? What kind of man was Marcus Berringer, anyway, to change loyalties like the wind?
Devin let out a deep breath. He was on his own now. He’d need to find his way back to La Paix … to Chastel, Armand, and Gaspard. Together they would plan a way to thwart this new regime and Marcus would be forever marked as an enemy, not an ally.
Devin tried again to move … to catch some small sight of the repository that had housed the Chronicles. Perhaps there was something left … even a few pages that could be salvaged and reassembled. But the forest lay shrouded in mist and smoke and drizzling rain; here and there an evergreen branch appeared momentarily before the mist swallowed it again. Everything seemed muffled and unreal. Even the birds were silent.
A frightening notion wiggled into Devin’s thoughts like a worm. Perhaps, he would die here after all, only a few feet away from the greatest discovery in Llisé’s history. At least, he had seen this arcane library and touched it with his own hands – the collected histories of every province in the empire. For a populace that was forbidden to learn to read and write, they had not only recorded their oral history on paper; they had organized it and filed it alphabetically. If René Forneaux assumed he was fighting ignorant provincials he was going to be in for shock.
Devin hoped he would be there to see it but from the amount of blood that continued to soak the neck and shoulder of his jacket, he was beginning to doubt whether he would. His head ached unbearably and he curled up on his side like a child and waited for morning. Sleep came fitfully, dragging him down into nightmare and releasing him, cold and shivering, into the darkened forest once again.
“Dear God!” said a familiar voice. “Devin?” Hands eased him onto his back. He groaned as the world spun and lingering raindrops fragmented like a hundred prisms of light as the sun’s rays pierced the trees.
Marcus was bending over him, slapping him lightly on the cheek. “Can you hear me?” he asked insistently.
Devin nodded, the motion setting off pain that threatened to make the top of his head explode.
Marcus exhaled loudly and sat back on his heels. “Thank God you’re alive!” he murmured.
Devin forced words between cracked lips. “No thanks to you.”
“I saved your life,” Marcus explained calmly. “They’d have killed us both if I’d tried to resist. I asked you to trust me. Shooting you was the only way I could save you.”
“Have you come to finish me off then?” Devin hissed through gritted teeth.
“I saved your life,” Marcus repeated sharply.
“And your own skin,” Devin murmured.
Marcus’ face flushed an angry red. “Had I meant to kill you, Devin, do you think I’d have missed at ten feet? I had to get those soldiers away from you until I could come back alone. They had to believe you were dead, so I grazed your head with the bullet. There was lots of blood but I spared your life.” He slid a hand behind Devin’s back. “Now let me help you, damn it! I need you to sit up.”
Devin felt completely limp, like all his bones had turned to water. He let Marcus pull him into a sitting position against a tree but he folded up in agony, cradling his head in his hands.
His former bodyguard produced water and bandages. Dabbing lightly at Devin’s temple and the back of his head with a wet rag, he frowned, his craggy face wrinkled and drawn. He wrapped a bandage around Devin’s head and buried the bloody rags under a bush. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “Can you walk?”
“How far?” Devin asked.
Marcus put his hands under Devin’s arms and lifted him to his feet. “Back to La Paix,” he replied, pulling Devin’s arm over his shoulder.
Devin exhaled, “God!”
“I’ll carry you if I have to,” Marcus said.
“Don’t,” Devin protested. He put one unsteady foot forward, his vision still blurry and uncertain. “I can’t see, Marcus.”
“At all?” Marcus asked in alarm.
Devin waved a hand. “Everything is blurry … fragmented.”
“That’s to be expected with a concussion,” Marcus assured him. “You smacked the back of your head on a rock when you fell. It should go away in a few days.”
Devin looked for the shepherd’s hut that had housed the entrance to the repository. He blinked, willing his eyes to focus on what remained. The bank of earth behind it had collapsed; ironically leaving the rickety doorway standing, like a portal to nowhere. Only a mound of dirt was visible and the lingering smell of burning paper. “Do you think there’s anything left?” he asked.
“If there is, we can’t save it now. I need to get you somewhere safe,” Marcus replied. “Come on.”
Devin’s hand fumbled toward the lining of his coat.
“You still have Tirolien’s Chronicle,” Marcus assured him. “They never even looked for anything hidden in your coat.”
“Thank God,” Devin whispered. “Where are Emile and his men?”
“Dead,” Marcus said shortly. He urged him forward. “We have to go. There won’t be any second chances for either of us now. If we’re caught, we’ll be shot on sight.”
Devin moved with him, staggering through the trees to the top of the hill. They followed the edge of the forest, staying deep within its shade as they made their way painfully back toward the road. At the СКАЧАТЬ