Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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Название: Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light

Автор: Janny Wurts

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Книги о войне

Серия:

isbn: 9780007318087

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СКАЧАТЬ his gorge. Nor was his eyesight trustworthy, blurred as it was by the bitter well of his tears.

      The pull of the bow pained his infected hand. Determined, he nocked the first arrow. Wood rattled against horn, tempo to his trembling, and the snatched sob of unsteady breath. Yet the will behind each move was pure iron. Integrity required that he must not falter, whatever his bodily failings. The fabric of self, curse torn and sullied, demanded no less than to finish in mercy the cruel act imposed by oathsworn survival.

      At the end, as he hauled the bow into full draw, his rage at the binding proscribing his life became the fuel that set his hand steady. The ache as his mangled right hand took the strain and the sudden spurt of fresh bleeding became a pittance beside the wounding affliction of conscience.

      ‘Myself, the sole enemy,’ he gasped in Paravian. ‘Dharkaron Avenger forgive.’

      He released. On the smeared rocks below, one less voice cried out. Arithon dashed back the burn of salt tears. Again, he nocked feathered broadhead to string. Arrow by arrow, he dispatched the groaning wounded downslope. Each careful, clean shot snuffed another cry of suffering, but woke in him recall of an unquiet past, and a summer dell known as the Havens. He quashed the revolt of his clamoring mind, but could not repress the shattering screams of the dying. Pain and will could do nothing to erase final agony.

      Alone in the Baiyen, against a sere mountain silence Mankind had no right to break, a night’s waking nightmare dropped Rathain’s prince like a spearcast run through the heart.

      At the end, the bow fell from his nerveless hands. No strength and no passion of temper remained, to hurl the hated weapon away. Arithon crumpled, brought to his knees by the anguish of immutable truth: that no centaur guardian had ever used lethal force against any man who offended. More wounding still, no matter whose war host harried his back, the toll of his dead had unmanned him. He could not shoulder the tactics of massacre again, except at the cost of his sanity.

       Winter 5670

      Diviner

      Far removed from the blizzards that savaged Baiyen Gap, and the fugitive crown prince who fled Jaelot’s guard, the forerunner of war set foot on the western coast of Rathain. The fated arrival came deep in the night, on the decks of an oared galley rowed at forced speed through the narrows of Instrell Bay.

      A fortnight had passed since the solstice. Oblivious to the flare of contention between Koriathain and Fellowship Sorcerers, untroubled by threats posed by grimwards or bindings containing the rampaging hungers of wraiths, the Mayor of Narms awoke in snug blankets. Someone who had a fist like a battering ram hammered the door to his chamber. He blinked, reluctant to complete the transition between dreams and the burdens of cognizance.

      The pounding continued, relentless. ‘Hell’s blighted minions!’ The mayor sat up. Blinking in owlish distemper, he croaked, ‘Which trade guild’s been raided this time?’

      Two more hours remained before dawn. An ice flood of light from the waning moon threw shadow from the mullions in cut diamonds over his counterpane. Faint shouts echoed up from the courtyard. Then the door panel cracked, and his snub-nosed chamber steward peered past the jamb in fussed inquiry. ‘My lord, you’ll be needed. A galley from Tysan just tied up at the docks, flying sunwheel banners and bearing no less than a royal delegation.’

      ‘Royal? The Prince Exalted, himself?’ Narms’s mayor shot out of bed, while a gapped seam in the quilt exhaled a flurry of goosedown.

      Past the whirl of feathers, the house steward returned a blunt shrug. ‘I’m sorry. The banners suggest so.’

      ‘Loose fiends and Dharkaron’s Black Chariot!’ An unannounced crossing in the depths of winter suggested a breaking disaster. Gruff even when fully wakeful, the mayor batted snagged fluff from his beard and hushed his wife’s drowsy inquiry.

      ‘State visitors. Ring the bell for your maid. We need to be dressed very quickly.’ To his steward, he added, ‘Have you heard what’s afoot?’

      The pink, balding man bobbed his head like a turtle. ‘Lord, the dock runner who fetched me knew nothing. The night watch hauls wood to light fires in the hall. There won’t be time to rehang proper tapestries.’

      ‘Well at least the trestles were scrubbed since the feast,’ the wife said in acid irritation. ‘Royal envoys who don’t send a herald ahead will just have to bear with inconveniences.’ She shoved out of bed in her night rail, a handsome woman with graceful hands who marshaled her thoughts, blinking into the flare as the servant struck light to a candle. ‘The kitchen staff will be baking the day’s bread. Get someone to send them notice we’re receiving, and tell them how many guests of state.’

      ‘I’ll go, mistress,’ the steward offered at once, then added, ‘should I have the east-wing chambers refreshed?’

      ‘Wake the master of horse, first,’ the mayor amended, one foot poked half into his hose. ‘If this meeting’s too pressing to bide until daybreak, I’m thinking we’ll be dunned for fast couriers before anyone wants hospitality and beds.’

      ‘Yes, lord.’ The steward ducked out, the door latch clicked shut with apprehensive care.

      ‘At least we didn’t suffer this intrusion two days ago.’ Prosaic, the wife pinned her smoky tangles of hair, then dug in the lacquered armoire for a wrap, and the best of her fancy lace petticoats.

      Stalled by a tangle snagged in his points, the mayor gave tongue out of habit. ‘Our guild ministers weren’t all puking drunk at the twelfth night festivities.’

      ‘No.’ The honeyed agreement that made his wife indispensable at state functions preceded her wasp sting of denouement. ‘But if your Divine Prince saw all the jewels on their wives as they tried to outshine the Etarrans, we’d find his marshals dunning our treasury. Or don’t you think Avenor’s come begging for funds, or armed troops, or else the grain stores to mount a winter campaign on barbarians?’

      ‘I don’t know what he’s come for!’ Off-balance, the mayor jammed his stick shanks into his best pair of silk-slashed breeches. ‘If you’re going to speculate, have the good grace to wait until after I’ve clothed my shivering buttocks.’

      ‘You’ll sweat soon enough, on your knees before royalty.’ The wife’s catty tongue showed no deference to station. ‘Bowing to a blood prince was bother enough, before there were flocks of sunwheel fanatics, rolling cow eyes like he’s god sent.’

      The mayor stretched a kink from the small of his back, startled to unwonted laughter. ‘Say that to his Grace, I’ll buy you new pearls.’

      ‘I’d rather warn the unmarried chambermaids to steer clear of shadowy alcoves.’ Adrift in lace petticoats, with her ribbons undone, his wife looked up in snide interest. ‘Gossip from Avenor insists his Exalted Grace hasn’t bedded his princess since the hour his heir was conceived.’ Through a frown at her husband, who snatched up yesterday’s shirt for convenience, she added, ‘That’s sixteen years. If the s’Ilessid’s kept his manhood to himself for that long, I agree with his priests. He’s not human.’

      ‘He’s not human,’ the mayor affirmed, then bellowed, short-tempered, for his valet to roust up and lend help with the studs on his doublet. When the slug-headed servant failed to appear, the mayor kept talking, his elbows bent at ridiculous angles through his СКАЧАТЬ