Sword of Fire. Katharine Kerr

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       PART ONE

       Eldidd and the Westlands, 1428

      Never loose an arrow with your eyes shut.

       Westfolk proverb

      

       Chapter 1

      Up in a high tower chamber, Alyssa vairc Sirra stood at a lectern and studied a massive book of ancient chronicles. A shaft of sunlight, pale from the encroaching fog, fell through the window onto the page. Now and then she looked away from the passage she was memorizing and glanced out at the view. She could see down to Aberwyn’s fine new harbor and the Southern Sea beyond, dark blue water, just flecked with white caps in the last light of the day. Soon, she realized, it would be too dark to read.

      ‘Lyss! Lyss!’ Gasping for breath, Mavva flung herself into the chamber. ‘You’ve got to come. Now!’

      Alyssa looked up from the book. Mavva’s long dark hair had slipped from its clasp. Tendrils hung in tendrils around her face, normally so pale, now flushed and red

      ‘Why?’ Alyssa said. ‘What’s so wrong? And you shouldn’t run up the stairs like that. No wonder you’re all out of breath.’

      ‘You don’t understand. He’s dying. Cradoc the bard.’

      Alyssa slammed the chronicle-book shut.

      ‘Let me just get my surcoat. I’ll come with you!’

      With their red students’ surcoats flapping over their skirts and tunics, the two women hurried down the long spiral staircase. They ran out into the main courtyard of the United Scholars’ Collegia in Aberwyn, where they were studying in residence. The news had spread as Mavva had passed by, it seemed, because some thirty other students, men and women both, were milling about on the grassy lawn near the front gates of the scholars’ preserve. A pair of chaperones, older women dressed in black, fluttered at the mob’s edge and called out cautions. A dark-haired lad with the pale orange surcoat of Wmm’s Scribal Collegium over his breeches СКАЧАТЬ