"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 09 - The Red Wyvern" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

‘Evandar? Is that the man of the Seelie Host? You know him?’

‘Better than I wish to, I’ll tell you, far far better than that. Now come in, lad, and let’s get you warm.’

The door was creaking open to flood them with firelight and the smell of resinous smoke. They brushed
past the servant woman who’d opened it and hurried into a great hall where fires crackled in two hearths
of slabbed stone, one on either side of the square room. The walls were made of massive oak planks,
scrubbed down and polished smooth, then carved in one vast pattern of engraved lines rubbed with red
earth. Looping vines, spirals, animals, interlace - they all tangled together in great swags across each wall,
then swooped up at each corner to the rafters before plunging down again in a riot of carving...

Domnall followed his rescuers across the carpet of braided straw to the hearth at the far side. At a
scatter of tables sat a scatter of men, all short and bearded, and in a carved chair right up near the fire a
lady, wearing a pair of drab loose dresses and heavy with child. Like the men around her, she was not
very tall, more like the grain-fed Sassenach far to the south in stature, and since her pale hair hung in a
single braid, Sassenach is what he assumed her to be. Domnall knelt at her feet.

‘My lady,’ he said. ‘My thanks and my blessing to you, for the saving of my life.’

‘My men saved you, not me,’ she said in a low, musical voice. ‘But you’re welcome in my hall.’ She
glanced round. ‘Otho! Fetch him a tankard and some bread, will you?’
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‘As my lady Angmar commands.’ One of the men, a bare four feet tall, and white of hair and beard,
rose from a table. ‘Sit in the straw by the hearth, lad, and spread that bit of cloth you’re draped in out to
dry.’

They had to be Sassenach, all of them, because they wore trousers and heavy shirts instead of proper
plaids and tunics, but he wasn’t about to hold their birth against them after the way they’d rescued him.
Since the hearth was a good ten feet long, Domnall could move a decorous distance away from the lady
to sit near a brace of black and tan hounds. He unwound his plaid, stretched it out on the straw to dry,
and sat in his tunic by the fire to struggle with the wet bindings of his boots. By the time he had them off,
Otho had returned with the promised tankard and a basket of bread.

‘A thousand thanks,’ Domnall said. ‘So, this is Haen Marn, is it? I’ve never seen your isle before.’

‘Hah!’ Otho snorted profoundly. ‘And I wish I never had either.’

‘Uncle!’ A young man sprang up from his seat at a table. ‘Hold your tongue!’

‘Shan’t! I rue the day that ever we travelled to this cursed place. I just get myself home and what
happens? Hah! Wretched dweomer and -’

‘Uncle!’ The young man hurried over. ‘Hush!’

‘You holdyour tongue, young Mic, and show some respect for your elders.’