Читать книгу Warhost of Vastmark - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 9

In Whitehold, the Koriani Prime broods over two image spheres whose significance stymies all conjecture: in one, the flare of mighty wards conceals some momentous event in Althain Tower; the next shows the Master of Shadow on a windy beach, a knife at his wrist as he kneels to swear blood oath at the feet of a Fellowship Sorcerer; and resigned to frustration, the Prime Matriarch curses timing, that First Enchantress Lirenda’s trial to regain the order’s Great Waystone cannot take place any sooner than spring equinox …

In a windy pass in Vastmark, the discorporate Sorcerer Luhaine waylays a black-clad colleague in the company of a circling raven to relate ill news from Althain Tower: ‘The knowledge Kharadmon sought from the worlds beyond South Gate has eluded his grasp. The Mistwraith’s curse over the royal half-brothers cannot be tried at this time. Its latent evils are far worse than we feared, a danger too dire to provoke …’

Soon after Prince Lysaer and Duke Bransian shake hands to seal an armed alliance, and the mercenary camps at Alestron muster to cross Shand to stage an attack on Merior, the clansmen under Erlien, caithdein of the realm, engage his given order to strip every farmstead in the path of the army of horses and cattle, and to hamper their advance as they can …