"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 01 - Sorcery Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

her elder brother, Halli, and her twin, Fent; the second pair comprised Tor Leeson and
their cousin, Erno Hamson.
"That's all I need," she groaned. "An audience."
Chin up, she strode resolutely down the volcanic dune to face the inevitable
chastisement, the ashy sand crunching unhelpfully underfoot. Before she had got within
even ten feet of him, her father turned around and regarded her grimly, his gnarled,
weather-beaten hands on his hips.
"Where have you been?"
 Aran Aranson was a big man, even by Eyran standards. His wife, Bera, often joked that
before they were married, whenever her mother had spotted him riding up to their farm
to pay court on his sturdy little pony (his feet so close to the ground despite its zealous
efforts that it seemed that the pair of them might at any moment trip each other up and
fall in an undignified heap) she would say, "Here comes Aran Aranson, that great ogre of
yours again, Bera. If you have children—hear what I say—they'll turn out trolls and you'll
be split in two like a piece of firewood!" And then she'd cackle fit to bursting and fuss over
him till the poor lad turned red, knowing that somehow he was the butt of her teasing yet
again. She still had a robust sense of humor, Gramma Rolfsen, and her laughter could
often be heard on a smoky night pealing out from the steading at Rockfall; but her
son-by-law had never quite learned the trick of such humor, and as he stared at his
errant daughter, he showed not even the trace of a smile.
Katla, having spent years learning to charm her father over her minor misdemeanors,
took in the single-browed line of his frown and the flint in his eye and quailed. Her lips
blue with the telltale signs of a fruit pie swiped from an unattended table, she racked her
brain for a suitable falsehood.
"I just went for a walk—to watch the sun come up over Sur's Castle," she said, careful
on this occasion not to present him with an outright lie, for the expedition had almost
started so.
"We're not in Eyra now," he said grimly, stating the obvious. "You can't just wander
around on your own at the Allfair. It isn't safe."
So it wasn't anger, after all, but worry! He was worried about her. Relief swept over
her: she laughed.
"Who's there to be afraid of? I'm not afraid of anyone, especially not men." She
grinned, teasing out the emphasis on the last word. "You know perfectly well I can defend
myself—didn't I win the wrestling last summer?"
It was true. Slim and swift and lithely evasive, there had been no one who could pin
her down. Wrestling Katla was like trying to wrestle an eel.
She bared a bicep and flexed it as if to prove her point. Hammering metal and manning
the bellows at the smithy had had its effect: a hard, round ball of muscle popped
impressively into view. "Who's going to tangle with that?"
But her father was not to be deflected. Moving far more quickly than you'd imagine
likely for a man of his size, Aran lunged forward like a wolf going for a rabbit and seized
her arm so hard that she winced. When he let go, the marks of his fingers were clearly
visible in the smooth tan of her flesh. The smile faded from Katla's face and an angry flush
rose up her neck. An uncomfortable silence fell between father and daughter. Katla, afraid
of her own temper, stared hard at the ground between her feet and started sullenly to
trace a knotwork pattern in the black ash with her toe. As the silence lengthened, she
found her unpredictable mind considering how she might incorporate this pattern into the
hilt of the next seax she worked.
"They're odd about women, the Empire men," Aran said at last. "You can't trust
them—they have bizarre customs and it can make them behave dangerously. A few