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

"I do not understand what has happened here," he managed at last.
The seither, Festrin One Eye, smiled grimly. There was blood on her
teeth and gums, blood which looked black in that garish light. They do not
bleed as we do, Gramma Garsen had said; they swell to twice their
normal size and their veins fill with black fluid, one drop of which would
sear a hillside for eternity.
"Do you really think me aptagangur, Aran Aranson?" Festrin said with
remarkable sweetness, and began to unlace the ties of her tunic.
Aran's eyes dropped unwillingly from the seither's face to where her
clever fingers pulled apart the bows and knots. Beneath her hands the torn
and bloodstained fabric parted easily; but although he had seen the Red
Sword rammed home to the hilt by a panicked Fent, there was no sign of
any hurt there? no ragged hole, gouting the blood that had spurted over
Katla as she tended to the dying woman; not even the closed purple of a
stab wound newly healed. Nothing but smooth white skin, and the swell of
her breasts. Aran felt his mouth drop open like any fool's.
Fent spun to regard his father, his face waxy with shock. "I killed her,"
he whispered. "I saw her die."
Festrin stepped around the boy as if he were of no more consequence
than a stray dog, keeping her eyes all the while on the Master of Rockfall.
"Your daughter is a rare creature, Aran Aranson. She tried to give her life
for mine, but do not fear? she is still alive. She will recover herself. Mark
well what I say. Do not waste her. Do not bargain her away like a prize
ewe; nor wrap her in silks and mothballs. Earth magic flows through her,
and something else as well? " She leaned toward him and poked him hard
in the shoulder with one long, lean finger. "Look well to your daughter,
Master of Rockfall; because if you do not, I shall return for her and you
will wish I had never set foot on this island."
And having delivered this pronouncement, she was past him, her form
silhouetted for a moment, tall and straight as a monolith, in the frame of
the smithy door; and then she was gone.



NO one saw the seither leave. No boat was missing from its moorings
the next day, nor was any horse gone from the stables. All Tarn Fox, the
leader of the group of mummers with whom Festrin One Eye had come to
Rockfall, could offer by way of explanation was to tap the side of his nose
and declare: "Best not to enquire how seithers travel the world."
Katla spent two days in the bed to which Aran carried her, sleeping as
deeply as a sick child, waking briefly, then sleeping again. But on the third
day, when he came to sit by her, he found the bedclothes thrown off onto
the floor in a heap and her boots missing from their place beside the door.
Aran walked the enclosures and checked the outhouses, but to no avail.
At last he took the path down to the harbor where, reduced to simple
methods by the clubhand she had earned from the burning, she would
sometimes sit and dangle a crabline from the seawall, but the only folk
down there were the fishermen taking their boats out on the early tide.
He went out to the end of the mole anyway and turned back to stare
inland. The steading at Rockfall was no grand affair like some of the other