"Kerr, Katharine - Deverry 01 - Daggerspell v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

In the hall of light, there are no lies.
“I’ll try to remember,” she said. “I’ll do my best to remember the light.”
She felt them grow amused in a gentle way. You will be helped to remember,” they said. “Go now. It is time for you to die and enter the darkness.”
When she began to kneel before them, to throw herself down before them, they rushed forward and forbade her. They knew that they were only servants of the one true light, paltry servants compared to the glory they served, the Light that shines beyond all the gods.
When she entered the gray misty land, she wept, longing for the light. There, all was shifting fog, a thousand spirits and visions, and the speakers were like winds, tossing her with their words. They wept with her at the bitter fall that she must make into darkness. These spirits of wind had faces, and she realized that she too now had a face, because they were all human and far from the light. When they spoke to her of fleshly things, she remembered lust, the ecstasy of flesh pressed against flesh.
“But remember the light,” they whispered to her. “Cling to the light and follow the dweomer.”
The wind blew her down through the gray mist. All around her she felt lust, snapping like lightning in a summer storm. All at once, she remembered summer storms, rain on a fleshly face, cool dampness in the air, warm fires and the taste of food in her mouth. The memories netted her like a little bird and pulled her down and down. She felt him, then, and his lust, a maleness that once she had loved, felt him close to her, very close, like a fire. His lust swept her down and down, round and round, like a dead leaf caught in a tiny whirlpool at a river’s edge. Then she remembered rivers, water sparkling under the sun. The light, she told herself, remember the light you swore to serve. Suddenly she was terrified: the task was very grave, she was very weak and human. She wanted to break free and return to the Light, but it was too late. The eddy of lust swept her round and round until she felt herself grow heavy, thick, and palpable.
Then there was darkness, warm and gentle, a dreaming water-darkness: the soft safe prison of the womb.
In those days, down on the Eldidd coast stretched wild meadows, crisscrossed by tiny streams, where what farmers there were pastured their cattle without bothering to lay claim to the land. The meadows were a good place for an herbman to find new stock, and old Nevyn went there frequently. He was a shabby man, with a shock of white hair that always needed combing, and dirty brown clothes that always needed mending, but there was something about the look in his ice-blue eyes that commanded respect, even from the noble-born lords. Everyone who met him remarked on his vigor, too, that even though his face was as wrinkled as old leather and his hands dark with frog spots, he strode around like a young prince. He traveled long miles on horseback with a mule behind him, as he tended the ills of the various poor folk in Eldidd province. A marvel he is, the farmers all said, a marvel and a half considering he must be near eighty. None knew the true marvel, that he was well over four hundred years old, and the greatest master of the dweomer that the kingdom had ever known.
That particular summer morning, Nevyn was out in the meadows to gather comfrey root, and the glove-finger white flowers danced on the skinny stems as he dug up the plants with a silver spade. The sun was so hot that he sat back on his heels for a bit of a rest and wiped his face on the old rag that passed for a handkerchief. It was then that he saw the omen. Out in the meadow, two larks broke cover with a heartbreaking beauty of song that was a battle cry. Two males swept up, circling and chasing each other. Yet even as they fought, the female who was their prize rose from the grass and flew indifferently away. With a cold clutch of dweomer knowledge, Nevyn knew that soon he would be watching two men fight over a woman that neither could rightfully have.
She had been reborn.
Somewhere in the kingdom, she was a new babe, lying in her exhausted mother’s arms. Dimly he saw it in vision: the pretty young mother’s face, bathed in sweat from the birth but smiling at the babe at her breast. When the Vision faded, he jumped to his feet in sheer excitement. The Lords of Wyrd had been kind. This time they were sending him a warning that somewhere she was waiting for him to bring her to the dweomer, somewhere in the vast expanse of the kingdom of Deverry. He could search and find her while she was still a child, before harsh circumstances made it impossible for him to untangle the snarl of their intertwined destinies. This time, perhaps, she would remember and listen to him. Perhaps. If he found her.


Cerrgonney, 1052

The young fool tells his master that he will suffer to gain the dweomer. Why is he a fool? Because the dweomer has already made him pay and pay and pay again before he even stood on its doorstep. . . .
The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

With a cold drizzling rain, the last of the twilight was closing in like gray steel. As she looked at the sky, Jill was frightened to be outside. She hurried to the woodpile and began to grab an untidy load of firewood. A gray gnome, all spindly legs and long nose, perched on a big log and picked at its teeth while it watched her. When she dropped a stick, it snatched it and refused to give it back.
“Beast!” Jill snapped. “Then keep it!”
At her anger, the gnome vanished with a puff of cold air. Half in tears, Jill hurried across the muddy yard to the round stone tavern, where cracks of cheerful light gleamed around wooden shutters. Clutching her firewood, she ran down the corridor to the chamber and slipped in, hesitating a moment at the door. The priestess in her long black robe was kneeling by Mama’s bed. When she looked up, Jill saw the blue tattoo of the crescent moon that covered half her face.
“Put some wood on the fire now, child,” the priestess said. “I need more light.”
Jill picked out the thinnest pitchiest sticks and fed them carefully into the fire burning in the hearth. The flames sprang up, sending flares and shadows dancing round the room. Jill sat down on the straw-covered floor in a corner to watch the priestess. Mama lay very still, her face a deadly pale, running big drops of sweat from the fever. The priestess picked up a silver jar and helped Mama drink the herb water in it. Mama was coughing so hard that she couldn’t keep the water down.
Jill grabbed her rag doll and held her tight. She wished that Heledd was real, and that she’d cry so Jill could be very brave and comfort her. The priestess set the silver jar down, wiped Mama’s face, then began to pray, whispering the words in the ancient holy tongue that only priests and priestesses knew. Jill prayed, too, in her mind, begging the Holy Goddess of the Moon to let her mama stay alive.
Hesitantly Macyn came to the doorway and stood watching, his thick pudding face set in concern, his blunt hands twisting the hem of his heavy linen overshirt. Macyn owned this tavern, where Mama worked as a serving lass, and let her and Jill live in this chamber out of simple kindness to a woman with a bastard child to support. He reached up and rubbed the bald spot in the middle of his gray hair while he waited for the priestess to finish her prayer.
“How is she?” Macyn said.
The priestess looked at him, then pointedly at Jill.
“You can say it,” Jill said. “I know she’s going to die.”
Jill wanted to cry, but she felt that she’d been turned to stone.
“She might as well know the truth,” the priestess said. “Here, does she have a father?”
“Of a sort,” Macyn said. “He’s a silver dagger, you see, and he rides this way every now and then to give them what coin he can. It’s been a good long while since the last time.”
The priestess sighed in a hiss of irritation.
“I’ll keep feeding the lass,” Macyn went on. “Jill’s always done a bit of work around the place, and ye gods, I wouldn’t throw her out into the street to starve, anyway.”
“Well and good, then.” The priestess held out her hand to Jill. “How old are you, child?”
“Seven, your holiness.”
“Well, now, that’s very young, but you’ll have to be brave, just like a warrior. Your father’s a warrior, isn’t he?”
“He is. A great warrior.”
“Then you’ll have to be as brave as he’d want you to be. Come say good-bye to your mama; then let Macyn take you out.”
When Jill came to the bedside, Mama was awake, but her eyes were red, swollen, and cloudy, as if she didn’t really see her daughter standing there.
“Jill?” Mama was gasping for breath. “Mind what Macco tells you.”
“I will. Promise.”
Mama turned her head away and stared at the wall.
“Cullyn,” she whispered.
Cullyn was Da’s name. Jill wished he was there; she had never wished for anything so much in her life. Macyn picked Jill up, doll and all, and carried her from the chamber. As the door closed, Jill twisted around and caught a glimpse of the priestess praying over Mama again.
Since no one wanted to come to a tavern with fever in the back room, the big half-round of the alehouse was empty, the long wooden tables standing forlorn in the dim firelight. Macyn sat Jill down at a table near the fire, then went to get her something to eat. Just behind her was a stack of ale barrels, laced with particularly dark shadows. Jill was suddenly sure that Death was hiding behind them. She made herself turn around and look, because Da always said a warrior should look Death in the face, but she was glad when there was nothing there. Macyn brought her a plate of bread and honey and a wooden cup of milk. When Jill tried to eat, the food seemed to turn dry and sour in her mouth. With a sigh, Macyn rubbed his bald spot.
“Well now,” he said. “Maybe your da will ride our way soon.”
“I hope so.”
Macyn had a long swallow of ale from his pewter tankard.
“Does your doll want a sip of milk?” he said.