"Jude Fisher - Fool's Gold 02 - Wild Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fisher Jude)

of the island's interior and cast their light across the cliffs so that he was
suddenly able to make out? instead of a rock? a tiny figure, its red hair
haloed by the sun.
Katla!



KATLA Aransen sat on the top of the Hound's Tooth, her face thrust out
toward the sea, her feet dangling over three hundred feet of clear space to
the water breaking over the rocks below. She had risen at dawn filled with
an energy she could put no name to and had fled the house before any of
her family were awake. In these last few days, she had seen and heard so
much that it had all become a great jumble in her head: Festrin's talk of
earth magic, her father's plans to steal the king's shipmaker for his mad
expedition into the frozen north; the voice in her head that had rumbled
like thunder when she had channeled whatever force it was that had
brought the seither back from the brink of death?
The implications of this last act in particular were so mystifying that
she could not bear to talk to another soul until she had made some sense
of it for herself. And so she had run down to the water's edge and climbed
to the top of the cliff by her favorite route.
Climbing always cleared her head of troubles, especially a dizzying
ascent like the dauntingly sheer seaward face of the Hound's Tooth, which
required every bit of her concentration. Being unable to climb all these
months because of her injuries, and believing that she never would again,
on account of the awkwardness of the clubbed hand, had been the worst
punishment of all.
She held the afflicted arm up in the air now, twisted it this way and
that. Still, she could not believe the marvel of it. Where before there had
been a great welted mass of red-and-white scar tissue, now she had four
fingers and a thumb again, albeit pale and thin in comparison with her
other tanned and muscular hand. It was hard to believe she was healed;
harder still to comprehend that she had brought about that healing
herself. It was perplexing and strange, and she half-expected at any
moment to look down and find the old monstrosity there again. So she
tried not to think about it at all, in case doing so might tempt the Fates
and remind them of her unworthiness as a recipient of this miracle.
But as she laid a hand on the first hold of the cold granite, a fine
trembling had started up in her fingers, followed by a hot buzz which had
suffused her whole arm, then her shoulders, neck, and head, and at last
her entire body, as if the rock were speaking to her in a language her blood
alone could understand, a language like thunder; and that had been the
most confusing thing of all.
For Katla, climbing was her ultimate escape? away from the chores of
the steading and her mother's doomed attempts to make her more
ladylike? out into the most inaccessible places on the island where no one
could follow her, even if they knew where she was. To be able to look down
onto the backs of flying gulls, to share a sun-drenched ledge with fulmars
and jackdaws, to watch the folk of Rockfall from way up high, and them
not even aware of their audience, was a special pleasure to her: at once a