"David Gemmell - Morningstar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gemmel David)

Yet still you want to hear it…No, I will not speak of those days. You may stay here
the night and join me for breakfast in the morning. Then you will go.

Do not be disappointed. I am favoring you with a kindness, though you cannot
understand it. You see, the world knows the Morningstar. He lives in the hearts and souls
of his people.

You know the song-prayer: He is the light reborn that shadows fear, when night
descends on us, he will be near.

Do I believe that? Of course. I wrote it.
 Midnight. A time for memories. My visitor is abed, his disappointment shrouded by
sleep and the dreams of the young. There is a log-fire behind me, filling the room with
warmth and a golden glow. Shadows flicker by the rafters like old ghosts.

It is an effort but I push open the window, dislodging the snow from the sill. The
cold, skeletal fingers of winter reach in, whispering against my shirt. I shiver and
stare out over the bleak glens to the ice-covered lakes and the mountains beyond.

Steep snow-covered peaks are silhouetted against the moon-bright sky, and I can
just make out the trees in their winter coats of

fallen cloud. And there is a mist - a Highland mist - stretching into the distance,
covering the ice-filled gulleys and the silent glens.

Oh, the Highlands. The people have forgotten now that I ever was Angostin. After
sixty-eight years they treat me as if I was born into the old nobility. And I, for my
part, have learned all their customs: the Dance of the Swords, the Blessing of the Oak,
the slashed palm of Brotherhood. At the celebrations I always wear the war-cloak of the
Raubert clan, given me by Raul himself ten years ago.

I wonder sometimes what my family would think of me, were any left alive to see me
now. There are no sword dances among the Angostins. So serious are my southern kin,
excelling only in battle and in the building of monstrous fortresses of grey stone. A
dour people are the Angostins, with an uneasy dislike of song and laughter.

Somewhere a wolf howls. I cannot see him from here.

The truth. How could I begin to tell it? Yet there is a need in me to speak of it,
to release it into the air. There is a deep armchair by the fire, covered in soft
leather, filled with horsehair. It is a comfortable chair, and I have spent many a long
hour in its depths,my head resting on its curved cushions. It is empty now. But I will
use the remnants of my power to fashion a listener. I will create a ghost of the future.
He shall hear the true tale of the Morningstar.

I do not wave my hands, nor speak the words of power. That is for fire lit evenings
in taverns, entertaining the gullible. They like to see a magicker perform. But this is
no performance, so I will merely concentrate. There he sits, sculpted in light, crafted
from magick, silent and waiting. I have given him an intelligent face, with keen grey
eyes, like the nobleman in the guest-room upstairs. And he is young, for it is the young