"Roberta Gellis - Thrice Bound" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gellis Roberta)

In the instant that she became aware of the tug of her father's will, she felt the change sweep over her.
She didn't need to look down at her hands to know they were now twisted and knobby, the knuckles
swollen, the skin spotted with the brown patches of old age. Her tunic hung loose on her, sagging over
flat, fleshless dugs where a moment before proud young breasts had lifted it. Her head felt oddly light
because the luxuriant growth of blue-sheened black hair that hung to her hips had transmuted into scanty
white locks. Hekate looked down instinctively to hide her eyes, where a flicker of triumph might be
exposed.

That change of form had originally been a punishment for some forgotten misdeed in her first blossoming
of adolescent rebellion, but the punishment had been far more valuable to her than simply teaching her
that obedience to her father was the easiest path. Some instinct had wakened in her when her father's
spell touched her, and when he tried to change her back, she resisted him and remained a withered
crone.

Even now as she turned to leave her portion of her father's house—the building that housed the entrance,
the slaves . . . and her—drawn by his will to his underground lair, even now a smile twitched at her lips.
Perses had been frightened, the first and only time Hekate could remember doing anything that frightened
her father.

The impulse to smile faded. It was sheer good fortune, or perhaps owing to the protection of the Great
Mother, whom Perses laughed to scorn, that he hadn't perceived the resistance to be deliberate. Possibly
he'd been so shocked by the failure of his restoration spell that he hadn't understood it was by Hekate's
own will that she retained the form of the crone. He had struck her, and to conceal his failure had
screamed at her that she should wear her disgusting form until the spell wore thin and she could find a
way to dismiss it herself.

She had fled, as if terrified—and some part of her was—across the fields that her father's slaves worked
and into the forest where she had willed herself back to her natural form and then back to the image of
the crone. She had spent a happy day in the woods, calling the small, shy, wild things to her, touching
their soft fur, their long ears, even their dainty paws, offering them nuts and berries she had found. When
she returned, still in the form of the crone so that her father should not learn how easy it was for her to
change, her mother wept with horror . . . but as ever Asterie could do nothing for her daughter.

Hekate crossed the long reception chamber and turned left past a heavy wooden door into a small
chamber in which another door—surfaced with modeled clay to match exactly the sun-baked brick of
the back wall—opened at her touch. The opening revealed a covered walk leading to another building,
somewhat larger than that a visitor would see at first. The entryway led to a courtyard lavishly planted
with bushes and flowers. To the left was an arch open onto an opulently furnished reception chamber.
Behind that, Hekate knew, were the bedchambers. Her skin, coarse and leathery as it was, prickled at
the thought, but she turned right where a narrow door, again painted to match the surroundings walls,
now stood open onto a dark corridor.

To her right was a solid wall. Hekate stared at it. She was either losing her mind or that was the way she
had gone the last time she had been summoned. However, since she had no choice, she turned left and
began to walk. Within ten steps a part of the corridor wall suddenly disappeared showing the head of the
stairs. Hekate shivered. He—or something he had summoned—was watching and knew where she was.
She could have sworn she had walked much farther when the corridor had opened to the right. She
looked down the stairs. They were unlit, steep, uneven . . . dangerous.