"R. A. MacAvoy - Damiano's Lute" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

voice in her head, a realization had come to her. It was Damiano himself who
was making her so unaccountably lonely. It was he whom she wanted to see: this
son of a bad lineage, who had ripped her soul apart, and who afterward had
spared no more than ten minutes out of his affairs to come and repair the
damage he had done.
Leaving her with a burden it was his own business to bear: a voice inaudible
and dark eyes unseen. It was Saara's immaterial baby, and would never grow up.
After a year and more its longing for Damiano had become her own.
She ought to find him, she thought, and make him take it back. Whether he
would take it or not, still she would be able to see the fellow again, and to
discover what he was doing. For a moment she was quite intrigued, imagining
where the dark boy ("boy" she called him always in her thoughts, to remind
herself that she was no girl) might have gone to, and what strange languages
he might be speaking, to what strange men. And women.
She had every right to seek him out, for he was a witch born, and so one of
her land.
For a few minutes Saara played with the idea of finding Damiano, but then
uncertainty rose in her mind. It whispered to her that if Damiano had a
matching desire to see her, this would have been plain in the regard of those
dark eyes that looked at her through the darkest hours of night. If he thought
of her as often as she thought of him, then surely she would know it, holding
his soul as she did. But die eyes stared without seeming to know what they
saw, and the voice which accompanied die eyes never spoke her name. It seemed
to Saara that all the caring in this strange bond was on her side.
And even if Damiano would welcome her... even if time had changed his
unpredictable Italian mind... to search him out through all die plains and
ranges of the West would be an arduous task. It could be done, certainly, by a
witch as experienced and learned as she was. But
6 Damiano's Lute
though Saara was powerful, she was a woman of the northern emptiness. She was
disturbed by* throngs of people, and the close dirt of cities disgusted her.
And at bottom she was afraid of such a journey: most of all afraid of another
meeting with Guillermo Delstrego's son.
Why should she want to visit Damiano anyway—a witch born with command in his
voice and a mind that might learn wisdom, who had maimed himself, throwing
away wisdom and birthright together? That denial was inexplicable: an act of
perversion. So what if Damiano played the lute and sang a pretty song or two?
Any Lappish witch could sing, and Damiano's southern songs had no power in
them (save over the heart, perhaps. Save over the heart).
He was nothing but a moonchild, twin to the hopeless presence he had left
Saara to tend. There were no signs he would grow into a full man. Without a
single soul, he could not.
All this Saara repeated to herself, letting the long-sought doe goat wander
off among the birches. If she reasoned long enough, surely she could talk
herself out of a long journey that must only have disappointment at the end of
it.
But as she reflected, her criticism became something else entirely. It became
a certainty as strong as presage: a certainty that Damiano as she had last
seen him (a creature neither boy nor grown man, splashing carelessly over the
marshy fields) was all the Damiano there was destined to be. She shuddered in