"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 01 - Daggerspell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

In the hall of light, there are no lies.

“I’ll try to remember,” she said. “I’ll do my best to remember the light.”

She felt them grow amused in a gentle way. You will be helped to remember,” they said. “Go now. It
is time for you to die and enter the darkness.”

When she began to kneel before them, to throw herself down before them, they rushed forward and
forbade her. They knew that they were only servants of the one true light, paltry servants compared to
the glory they served, the Light that shines beyond all the gods.

When she entered the gray misty land, she wept, longing for the light. There, all was shifting fog, a
thousand spirits and visions, and the speakers were like winds, tossing her with their words. They wept
with her at the bitter fall that she must make into darkness. These spirits of wind had faces, and she
realized that she too now had a face, because they were all human and far from the light. When they
spoke to her of fleshly things, she remembered lust, the ecstasy of flesh pressed against flesh.

“But remember the light,” they whispered to her. “Cling to the light and follow the dweomer.”

The wind blew her down through the gray mist. All around her she felt lust, snapping like lightning in a
summer storm. All at once, she remembered summer storms, rain on a fleshly face, cool dampness in the
air, warm fires and the taste of food in her mouth. The memories netted her like a little bird and pulled her
down and down. She felt him, then, and his lust, a maleness that once she had loved, felt him close to her,
very close, like a fire. His lust swept her down and down, round and round, like a dead leaf caught in a
tiny whirlpool at a river’s edge. Then she remembered rivers, water sparkling under the sun. The light,
she told herself, remember the light you swore to serve. Suddenly she was terrified: the task was very
grave, she was very weak and human. She wanted to break free and return to the Light, but it was too
late. The eddy of lust swept her round and round until she felt herself grow heavy, thick, and palpable.
 Then there was darkness, warm and gentle, a dreaming water-darkness: the soft safe prison of the
womb.

In those days, down on the Eldidd coast stretched wild meadows, crisscrossed by tiny streams,
where what farmers there were pastured their cattle without bothering to lay claim to the land. The
meadows were a good place for an herbman to find new stock, and old Nevyn went there frequently. He
was a shabby man, with a shock of white hair that always needed combing, and dirty brown clothes that
always needed mending, but there was something about the look in his ice-blue eyes that commanded
respect, even from the noble-born lords. Everyone who met him remarked on his vigor, too, that even
though his face was as wrinkled as old leather and his hands dark with frog spots, he strode around like a
young prince. He traveled long miles on horseback with a mule behind him, as he tended the ills of the
various poor folk in Eldidd province. A marvel he is, the farmers all said, a marvel and a half considering
he must be near eighty. None knew the true marvel, that he was well over four hundred years old, and
the greatest master of the dweomer that the kingdom had ever known.

That particular summer morning, Nevyn was out in the meadows to gather comfrey root, and the
glove-finger white flowers danced on the skinny stems as he dug up the plants with a silver spade. The
sun was so hot that he sat back on his heels for a bit of a rest and wiped his face on the old rag that
passed for a handkerchief. It was then that he saw the omen. Out in the meadow, two larks broke cover
with a heartbreaking beauty of song that was a battle cry. Two males swept up, circling and chasing each
other. Yet even as they fought, the female who was their prize rose from the grass and flew indifferently
away. With a cold clutch of dweomer knowledge, Nevyn knew that soon he would be watching two men