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

somehow, and not just some woman in my dreams.'
'And how do you know that?'
Niffa stared at her for a long moment. All at once her image wavered, turned
pale, and faded away. No doubt Dallandra's call for rational thought had woken
her, because it takes long years of practice for dweomerworkers to stay lucid
and rational in their dreams. Dallandra could safely assume that Niffa held no
real control over her magical gifts. Someone should be teaching the lass, she
thought. When she looked at the ward-stars that heralded her skill, she
laughed at herself. Most likely that 'someone' was her. Paths such as hers and
Niffa's never crossed by pure accident.
With the morning the clouds broke up under a cold north wind and let sunlight
flood the dun. In her tower room Dallandra took the oxhides down from the
windows to let in light for a task she'd been dreading. Jill's wooden chest
held those few things that could be said to be personally hers, as opposed to
things, such as her medicinals and dweomer books, which she had collected only
to help others. Among the Westfolk, Jill's bloodkin would have taken or given
away her belongings to those who should have them, but Jill had no bloodkin
left. The job had fallen to Dallandra, thanks mostly to their common devotion
to the dwcomer, which made them clans-women of a sort.
She pulled over the chair, sat down, and lifted the lid of the chest. One
piece at a time, she took out Jill's spare clothing - two shirts, a pair of
brigga, all much washed and patched, and a newish grey cloak - and laid them
on the table. The cloak would do for Jahdo, who grew taller daily, or so it
seemed. The others? Dallandra supposed that the gwerbret's women would cut
them into useful rags. At the bottom of the chest, however, she found things
of more interest; two bundles of brown cloth and a brown cloth sack.
The oblong bundle proved to be another book, a huge volume as long as her arm
from fingertips to elbow. It smelled of mildew, and the leather cover was
crumbling at the edges. When Dallandra opened it, she found tidy scribal
writing, faded to brown, announcing that this book belonged to Nevyn,
councillor to Maryn, Gwerbret Cerrmor. No wonder, then, that Jill had kept it
apart from the other books on her small shelf. Carefully Dallandra turned a
few of the parchment leaves, the writing faded, the sheets all ragged and
splitting at the edges, and came to a diagram of concentric circles, each
labelled to represent the nested spheres of the universe. The mildew made her
sneeze, and she shut the book with some care.
Dallandra had met Nevyn once, towards the beginning of his unnaturally
prolonged life. Thanks to her long dwelling in Evandar's Lands, to her the
meeting seemed to have happened no more than a few years past, even though it
had been close to four hundred years as men and elves reckon Time. He had
brought the Westfolk books of dweomer lore, and she remembered sitting in the
warm summer sun and turning each page, staring at the diagrams and at the
words she couldn't read. Later, of course, Aderyn had taught her the Deverry
alphabet. Aderyn, her husband, back then so long ago - she could still
remember how it had felt to love him, though the feeling was only a memory.
'Four hundred years ago.' She said the words aloud, but they carried little
meaning, just as her own age meant nothing to her. She'd been born more than
four hundred years ago, but of that what had she lived, truly lived in the
awareness of time passing? Thirty years perhaps, if that, because she had gone
to Evandar's country so young and stayed there so long. Did she regret it?