"Gray, Julia - Guardian 01 - The Dark Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

'You don't think it was possible that you were confusing dreams with reality?'
'No,' Terrel replied adamantly, stubborn now, even as his own treacherous doubts began to nag at him.
'What's that on your hand?'
The question took the boy completely by surprise. With a sinking feeling he realized that Cadrez didn't miss much - and that his own reaction had already given him away.
'I was a slave once,' he said. 'That was my master's brand.'
'But you're a free man now?' the seneschal asked, apparently unaware of any irony.
'Yes. He said I wasn't worth feeding any more, because of this,' Terrel replied, raising his withered arm. 'So he threw me out.' The lies sat uneasily on his conscience, but he knew he had no choice.
Cadrez nodded, appearing to find the story plausible enough.
'What will happen now?' Terrel asked quietly, unable to bear another silence.
'Arson is a serious crime,' the seneschal replied. 'And choosing such a target was unwise, to say the least. But you'll get a fair trial.'
In that moment, Terrel knew that - for all his curiosity - Cadrez believed him to be guilty, and that the verdict of any trial was a foregone conclusion. The entire town was convinced of his guilt. The supreme irony was that, even though he could use the glamour to persuade them that his eyes were blue - something he knew to be untrue - he was completely unable to make them accept his innocence - which was genuine. The difference, he realized, was that they did not want to believe him.
'When will the trial take place?' he asked, as the reality of his predicament slowly sank in.
'Not for a while. The way people are feeling right now, they'd probably vote to burn you at the stake. Either way, you're not going anywhere for a long time.'
'But you don't understand,' Terrel pleaded. 'I can't stay here. I've-'
'You should have thought of that before you decided to burn down our shrine,' the seneschal told him.
The cell door clanged shut, leaving his prisoner alone with his misery.
As the day passed, Terrel's body recovered slowly, so that he no longer felt sick all the time. The pain diminished to a dull ache that - although it seemed to affect every bone in his body - was preferable to the pounding headache he had woken to. His physical improvement was not matched by a mental revival, however, as his doubts, fears and bouts of self-recrimination gave him no respite. Even the earlier certainty of his innocence was being eroded as he began to wonder if somehow he had done the things he was accused of. At first this idea seemed ridiculous, but then he remembered how his dream of Shahan's death had mirrored reality - and how Alyssa had thought that he had in some way been responsible for the violence. Then again, that had been a remote occurrence, whereas here he was supposed to have been involved in person. Was it possible that his body could have done those things while his mind was asleep, leaving no memory of them afterwards? This idea was frightening enough, but the only alternative -assuming that the witnesses were right - was even worse.
Am I mad?
If he really was going insane he would not even be able to trust his own senses. Life would become meaningless. The whole world would be his madhouse. Perhaps his meetings with Alyssa and the ghosts had simply been illusions conjured up by his lunatic mind - a mind that had run amok at the full of the Red Moon.
'No!' he declared aloud. 'No.' He was not mad. The very fact that he was able to pose the question meant that he must be sane. Didn't it?
As a satisfactory explanation of the night's events continued to elude him, Terrel's thoughts returned to their consequences. Sane or not, guilty or not, he was a prisoner, friendless and alone, with no prospect of ever being released. Which meant that he would be unable to continue his journey, to complete the task he had been given. He still found it hard to believe that his efforts might actually affect the great events engulfing Vadanis, but he had given his word that he would try - and there was no way he could do that while he was locked up. Somehow, he would have to escape.
Easier said than done, was his own immediate response. The door to his cell was kept locked and, even if he were to get out, he had no idea how to escape from whatever building he was in, or how many guards he might have to confront. Beyond that he would have to make his way through a town where everyone knew of him - and hated him for what he had done. Even with the help of the glamour, that would be no easy task. His situation seemed hopeless, and compounded his crushing sense of failure.
His one consoling thought was the notion that, even here, it might be possible for Alyssa and the ghosts to visit him. He couldn't see how they could help him, but at least it would mean he would not feel so alone. On the other hand, he had seen nothing of them for six days and - even though he felt sure they would not abandon him intentionally - his former concern that something was preventing them from finding him again was even stronger now. Closing his eyes, he pleaded silently for them to hear him, to heed his cry for help. But there was no response.
'I can't do this on my own,' he whispered. 'I don't know what to do.'
'They say talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.'
Terrel opened his eyes with a start, and saw a guard peering in through the barred window. The smile on his face was full of malice.
'I'm not mad!' he shouted back, but that night he had a dream that made him doubt his own denial.
It began in a world that was entirely grey, all colour leached away by the swirling banks of fog that blotted out the sun and made blue sky a distant memory. Grey trees dripped with constant dew, and people moved silently, like shadows in the mist. A brief gust of damp breeze pushed the curtain aside for a moment, and he saw a large house, built - impossibly - upon the surface of a lake. He had just glimpsed a dozen or so grey faces, looking back at him from its windows, when the fog returned and he was blind again.
The nature of the darkness changed then, became hot and dry and stifling, clogging his throat and nose and scratching his eyes. When it cleared, he looked out onto a barren landscape that could only exist in his imagination. For mile upon mile there was nothing but sand and bare rock, shimmering in the heat, all of it the arid colour of sun-bleached clay. In its way it was even more oppressive than the greyness that had preceded it. Superimposed on this wasteland he saw the tattooed face of a woman, whose staring eyes shone white in her dark-skinned face. Her lips were moving, but he could hear nothing of what she said - and then she was gone, replaced by a ludicrous, ungainly creature with long, crooked legs and flat feet. It looked like the biggest, ugliest horse ever born - and it had a massive hump on its back. Its voice was audible, an absurd, grumbling roar that sounded much too fierce for its comical appearance.
The roar became an ominous muttering from below his feet, and Terrel looked down to see that he was now standing on solid ice. The contrast to the previous landscape could not have been more extreme. As far as the eye could see, all the world was coated in ice, shining white in the pale sunlight, except where the crevices that marked the surface were shadowed with pale blue. It reminded him of the crystal city of an earlier dream, but this was much more solid - even though it could only be another creation of his wayward imagination. Surely nothing like this frozen sea could actually exist? You're good at this, aren't you?
The voice broke into his subconscious without warning. Good at what? he thought. Seeing stuff. Remembering.
Once again he recalled the crystal city, the one that had encased Alyssa - but he pushed those images away instinctively. He didn't want the intruder to see that.
Too late, the voice said, laughing. You can't hide from your own dreams. You never could.
Who are you? Terrel demanded, but got no answer. The pain caught him unprepared, and he gasped, unable to breathe. Even then he knew better than to fight back. He surrendered to the blindness, to the hatred, to the deep, echoing rhythms of the invisible sea. The familiar mocking laughter followed him into the void.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Terrel woke after his third night in prison he was greeted by absolute silence. The drunk in the next cell, whose snoring had so confused him, had dried out and been released. As far as Terrel knew, he was now the only captive in the entire building. For the past two days his only visitors had been the guards who brought his frugal meals, and he had no idea when his trial would begin. Nor had he made any progress towards finding any possible means of escape. The isolation and the waiting were making him feel angry and depressed, and he longed for something - anything - to happen. So when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside his cell, he was instantly alert, ready to grasp whatever chances were offered.
A guard peered through the bars, told the prisoner to retreat to the far wall and sit down on his pallet, and only unlocked the door when Terrel had obeyed. A man he had not seen before opened the door and came in, watching the prisoner with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. He left the door wide open, but beyond it Terrel could see two soldiers, their eyes fixed on him, waiting for any unexpected move. If he tried to make a run for it, he would not get far.
'I am Uzellin, Chief Underseer of Tiscamanita,' the visitor announced grandly.
Terrel nodded in acknowledgement, but said nothing, wondering what an underseer could want with him. This was clearly not the reaction Uzellin had been expecting, and for a moment he seemed nonplussed. Then he recovered his composure, and stared at the prisoner. 'Have you no faith, boy?'
'I honour the moons and stars,' Terrel responded formally.
'And their prophets?'
Terrel got to his feet and bowed, hoping that this would be enough to satisfy the man's pride. There seemed little chance of his being an ally, but in his present predicament the boy could not afford to ignore any possibility, no matter how remote. His actions seemed to placate the underseer, who relaxed a little.
'I have been discussing your case with Seneschal Cadrez,' he stated, full of his own self-importance. 'The legal ramifications are naturally complex, but the one fact that seems crystal clear is that you did indeed start the fire that destroyed Kativa's Shrine.'
Terrel shook his head, but before he could speak Uzellin continued.
'And yet you claim to have been asleep, to remember nothing of those events. Cadrez is as good a judge of character as I have ever known in such matters, and he believes you are telling the truth.'
This was remarkably good news, and Terrel's face lit up with sudden hope.
'Which leads me to the obvious conclusion,' the underseer added.
'And that is?' Terrel prompted.