"Kress, Nancy - Summer Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Only Corwin noticed Rose. He stood a whole head taller than she -- surely it had only been a half head difference, once? He glanced at her, away, and then back again, puzzlement on his fresh, handsome face. His eyes, she saw, were gray.
"Do I know you, good dame?"
"No," Rose said.
"Did you come, then, with the visitors?"
"No, lad."
He studied her neat black dress, cropped hair, wrinkled face. Her eyes. "I thought I knew everyone who lived in the castle."
She didn't answer. A slow flush started in his smooth brown cheeks. "Where do you live, mistress?"
She said, "I live nowhere you have ever been, lad. Nor could go." His puzzlement only deepened, but she turned and hobbled away. There was no way she could explain.
There was shouting now, in the high tower, drifted down on the warm summer air. Through the open windows of the Long Gallery, Rose saw the queen rush past, her long velvet skirts swept over her arm. A nearly bald woman in a lace nightdress rushed from the north bedchamber, screaming. Soon they would start to search, to ask questions, to close the drawbridge.
She hobbled over it, through the place where the Hedge had been, now a bare circle like a second, drier moat. And they were waiting for her just beyond, half concealed in a grove of trees, seven of them. Old women like her, power in their glances, voices like the spinning wind.
Rose said, "Is this all there is, then, for the life I have lost? This magic?"
"Yes," one of them said.
"It is no little thing," another said quietly. "You have brought a prince back to life. You have clothed a fiefdom. You have seen, as few do, what and who you are."
Rose thought about that. The woman who had spoken, her spine curved like a bow, gazed steadily back.
The first old woman repeated sharply, "It is no little thing you have gained, sister."
Rose said, "I would rather have had my lost life."
And to that there was no answer. The women shrugged, and linked arms with Rose, and the eight set out into the world that hardly, as yet, recognized how badly it needed them. And perhaps never would.

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