[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Despite that, he wasn't quite sure how Harrier had managed to talkthe Captain of the City Guard into giving them two of the horses and opening the gate.Saying "my friendhas something he wants to try," really didn't seem to Tiercel as if it was a really persuasive argument."I don't quite see." he said, as they rode out through the gate."Oh, come on, Tyr.You remember Batho." "No.""He was on the wall the day we came.He wasn't the Captain of the Guard then, but Gurilas desertedwhen the refugees arrived, and he was promoted.""Clear as mud.""So, he's a friend of the Telchi's, and I've been training beside him for almost a month, and he knows I'mthe Telchi's apprentice, and he probably actually thinks we want to make a run for it, and won't he besurprised?"Tiercel would have laughed Harrier's bizarre sense of humor surfaced at the oddest moments but hehappened to glance up.Even on the northern side of the city, they could still see the column of theadvancing army.It was getting close."Come on," he said."We need to hurry."They spurred their horses into a gallop.IF the advancing Isvaieni were surprised to see their path barred by two lone riders, their leaders gave nosign of it.To Harrier's ill-concealed astonishment (he did his best not to show how stunned he was, butthe Telchi had said that every thought he had was displayed on his face for the world to see, and Harrierhad no reason to doubt it), when they brought their horses to the front of the advancing horde (callingthem "the Darkspawn army," accurate or not, had seemed a lot funnier when he couldn't see them), theline of shotors slowed, then stopped.If they hadn't been moving at the slowest of slow walks, they allwould have started banging into each other immediately, but all that happened was that a sort of ripple ofstillness spread through the army, as rider after rider brought his shotor to a halt.One of the many lessons the Telchi had been teaching him that wasn't immediately involved with hittingsomeone or avoiding being hit was in learning to estimate, at a glance and at a distance, the number ofpeople in a group.Harrier hadn't quite been sure what purpose learning something that arcane couldhave.Now he knew.It was so that he knew that there were between four and five thousand people outhere.Nearly as many as there were still inside the city.And all of these were prepared to fight."We want to talk," Tiercel said quickly, before the other man could say anything."My name is TiercelRolfort.I'm from Armethalieh.It's a city in the north.I want to know.what you want."The leader of the army stared at Tiercel for a long moment.A shotor was a good bit taller than a horse,so he was looking down.Harrier had a desperate urge to reach for his swords, but the man was armed,and so were the men on both sides of him.Harrier wasn't sure how quickly Tiercel could cast a spell, buthe wasn't sure it was fast enough to keep them from getting killed if Harrier did something that blatantlyprovocative."Once Golden Armethalieh was the last defense against the Darkness," the man said slowly."I, Zanattarof the Lanzanur Isvaieni, say this.Now Armethalieh is a crucible of error and Taint, just as the Iteru-cities are.Its day for Cleansing will come.""You're wrong," Tiercel said firmly."Armethalieh isn't Tainted.And neither is Tarnatha'Iteru.But ""You follow the False Balance.Since the time of the Great Flowering, the Balance of the World has beenout of true, for the Light destroyed the great evil that beset the world in that time as was only right butthose who kept the Light in those days did not stop where they should have, and so ever since that day,the Great Balance has been tipping more and more away from what the Wild Magic means it to be. Generation after generation has followed this False Balance, upholding it for their own purposes.Theyhave taught that Light is always good.But the children of the desert know better.Light scours.Lightblinds.Light kills.It is Darkness that is the friend and ally of the desertborn, and the True Balancecontains both Darkness and Light
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]