"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 10 - The Black Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

that you did snap at me.'
'I be frightened, Rae. That's the sad truth of it.'
She stopped on the edge of speaking and considered him.
'Not of you,'Verrarc went on, 'nor truly of what witchery you might work, but
of the town and for the town. I'd not have any more of my fellow citizens
murdered by your treacherous little spirits.'
'Well, that be fair, and my heart does ache for poor Niffa.' Raena sounded
surprisingly genuine. 'But there were a need on me, a desperate need, Verro,
to learn a thing Havoc could tell me.'
'It must have been desperate, all right, to risk so much for it.'
'It is, truly it is.' Raena looked at the fire and frowned, thinking. 'It be
such a hard tale to start, my love. Here - what would you say if I did tell
you that there be a new goddess in the world?'
For a long moment Verrarc could only stare at her.
'A what?' he said at last. 'A goddess? This be the last thing I thought you'd
-'
'No doubt.' All at once Raena smiled in gathered confidence. 'It came as a
strike of lightning to me as well, such a strange and marvellous thing it
were. But she did reveal herself to me, and she did mark me out to be her
priestess, to serve her all my born days and to live with her ever after in
her glorious country beyond death.' She paused, and never had he seen her
smile this way, as if she looked through the dark snowy night around them to
the warm light of a spring day. 'Her name, it be Alshandra.'
Verrarc felt like a sudden half-wit, stripped of words. What?' he managed to
say. 'What do you mean? A new goddess? How can there be such a thing? The gods
did make the world, and they've been in it always.'
Mayhap I speak wrongly, then.' Raena considered the fire and mowned again.
'She were hidden before, you see. Always has she been in the world, off in her
own true country, but she never did show herself to the world.'
'Ah.' He felt his mind turn to an ugly thought: had Raena gone utterly mad?
'But she did show herself to you. Somehow.'
'It be a simple tale. When I was still the wife of my pig of a husband I did
spend long hours weeping. You do remember that, I'm sure. And I would leave
Penli and go walk among the trees, and I would sit upon the ground and weep
some more. One afternoon she did come to me and ask me why I wept.' Raena's
voice dropped, heavy with awe. 'She were huge and tall, floating down from the
sky to stand before me, and she were so beautiful, too, and so kind, I did
fall to my knees before her. That pleased her. She did tell me how to call to
her, and when I would call, she would come to me.'
'Wait! Why did you not tell me about her, back then?'
'I did think you'd mock and say that she were but my fancy, and truly, I see
naught but doubt upon your face now.'
'How could I not doubt, since you did never so much as mention her before?'
Raena shrugged his objection away.
'She did call me her chosen one,' Raena continued. 'She did tell me that she
had watched me always, long before I were born, even. Oh, she did tell me so
many marvellous things, and she did take me to her beautiful country, where
there were green meadows and a river like silver, and strange cities to walk
within! Gone now, all of it but the meadows, because her enemies, and she does
have many, all of them evil in their very hearts, but they did destroy it to