Читать книгу Before Winter - Nancy Wallace K. - Страница 6

Devin’s head pounded in time with his heart as it slowly pumped his life’s blood onto the forest floor. He lay in deep, velvety darkness as rain spattered the leaves of the trees above him and slid in rivulets down his cheeks like tears. Gone was the fragrance of pine, the wind fresh off the ocean. The air stank of burned paper and cloth. The Chronicles were gone … he had tried and failed to save them and now they were lost forever. The entire history of the provinces had been destroyed by ignorance and flame. Ultimately, his trip to the provinces to preserve the Chronicles had led to their destruction and he would forever bear the guilt of it.

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.