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

swung out over the sea, giggling at their recklessness till they were weak.
And that had been only last year. Not very dignified behavior for a young woman of
marriageable age.
She smoothed her hands down her tunic, saw where the salt stains from the oars had
left round, almost fungal patches, where sweat and food and animals had all left their
marks. Even aside from its sorry state, she probably wouldn't be able to wear this tunic
much longer, for propriety's sake. It was getting a bit short in the leg now, and
surprisingly tight around the chest. Perhaps she'd sell enough knives to afford some new
clothes at the fair. She'd seen leather brought back from the Allfair that was as supple as
the finest cloth and could be sewn with an ordinary needle, instead of the vast, unwieldy
bodkin used for tacking Eyran horse skins together. With such leather could be fashioned
a luxurious jerkin. Not that Katla had any intention of sewing it herself. Rather, she'd
persuade her mother to sew it for her, as sewing was not something at which Katla
excelled. Left to herself, she'd produce great long stitches half a knuckle long in order to
get the garment finished, and when challenged would reply crossly: It'll do the job. Of
course, she'd have to admit that there was more than one item of clothing she'd made for
herself that had sprung apart at the seams, often in embarrassing circumstances, but it
made her no more patient. Maybe, she thought, returning to her buying fantasy, I'll get a
good shirt or two, and an embroidered waistcoat and some suede leggings, as well. And
a pair of pointed shoes. And some fine, long boots to ride in . . .
She laughed. She'd have to sell the entire stand to afford such a collection!
Knowing that she should swallow her pride and return at once to the family booth and
join the workers, but still smarting from her treatment, Katla stayed on the knoll and
watched the clouds burn away from a sky revealed at last to be as blue as a robin's egg.
The distant hills emerged from their grim shadows to expose slopes clothed in purple and
russet, where most likely at this time of year bilberry and heather vied for space with
brackens and grasses, like the hills at home. The thought came to her unbidden, that
climbing the Rock had perhaps been a reckless act, since she had thought nothing of the
circumstances, and that maybe she deserved her punishment, but she pushed it away,
feeling instead a sudden, burning urge to keep on running, away from the fairground, out
into these strange hills, to take one of the long, meandering black paths at random and
run to the summit, there to look out over the vast southern continent on which she now
stood. So she did.
***
"WHO was that man?" Fent asked, his face sharp with curiosity. The Istrian lord had
been everything he had expected from a member of the old enemy's nobility: arrogant,
dismissive, outright rude, and fanatical to boot. He felt his belt dagger twitch against his
leg as if alive with the hatred he felt for the southerner.
At the water's edge, Aran Aranson shaded his eyes and watched as his two ship's boats
crested the surf toward him, packed to the rims with crew and cargo. Some moments
passed, and the question hung, answerless, on the breeze.
 At last, Fent was forced to repeat his inquiry.
Aran turned to regard him, taking in the volatile light in his younger lad's eyes, his
balled fists and chancy temper. "He's a man you should avoid," he said mildly.
This merely served to irritate Fent further. "Why should I want to avoid him? I'd say I
was more than a match for a soft southern man like that, lord or no lord." And when his
father's face went blank and unresponsive: "In Sur's name, who is he?" Fent persisted,
goaded by the memory of the foreigner's haughty demeanor, his contempt of Katla, and
his strange fervor.
Aran clenched his jaw and fixed his son with the flinty glare he used to quell unruly