"The Binder's Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGarry Terry)

I’m sorry, he tried again, but when he drew breath he inhaled only the damp choking tang of shame.
“I saw a warder cut her throat rather than walk out the open cage door,” called someone from the back. “There’s some still believe the only way out is death. But we’ll follow you, boy—so long as you bloody get on with it.”
I’m sorry, he thought, and he could have managed the words out loud now, but what he said was “Yes. Come on. Come ahead. I’ll help you.”
He moved to the side of the group, prompting with hands and voice as they shuffled forward, just wanting to be sure of them before he took point again.
Far behind them, he heard a voice cry out. Someone else, trying to catch up. How could it be so far away? They hadn’t come that far down the passageway. He turned, but could see nothing. The voice called again: “Ilorna!” He recognized it now: the warder who had scorned him as lightless, no use to them in the trap they’d been in. The trap he’d freed them of. Now she was trying to escape, using the passages he had dreamed. “Ilorna, I’m coming!”
[17] A honey-haired wordsmith near the front of the group went very straight, then turned in blind response, started to go back.
“No,” said the illuminator next to her. “Let her catch up. She’s got two good feet.”
But the calls were getting fainter.
“She’s gone down some other tunnel,” Ilorna said.
There were no other tunnels.
“I’ve got to go to her! She’s my cousin, I can’t leave her!”
“You can. You must go on. We must go on.”
They struggled briefly, the illuminator wrapping her arms around the wordsmith to hold her back. The boy let go his purchase on rocky reality to go past them, into the middle of the group, trying to see down the depthless silver length of the tunnel behind them. The warder’s voice had grown very faint. Where in the bloody spirits could she have gone? There were no other tunnels—
Someone nearby cried out, and he saw a hobbling man tumble sideways—into the wall? Could he have dreamed awry, could the walls be softening? He ran to help the man sit up—his was the leg that dragged, he’d been using the wall to prop himself up as he hopped along—and found the corridor as firm and wide as ever. The man had fallen into an opening. Forcing one good foot in front of the other, the boy made his way in—a threft, two threfts, six, and again the wall fell away into silver space under his hand—
The tunnel branched.
That was why the warder couldn’t reach them.
He froze. The tunnels turned, and the tunnels branched. How would he find the way?
“I’ve got him, lad,” said the blind woman who’d spoken first. A wordsmith, once. She had the man’s arm over her shoulders. She would be a good right leg for him. The others were helping, too—being each other’s limbs and senses, trading hands for eyes and eyes for hands. “Which way, now?”
The clang of iron blades, the first death cries drifted faintly along the passageway, carried on silver currents from the chamber they had left. It seemed a nonned leagues away, and a lifetime ago. But the battle was happening now. It would be for nothing if they just stood there until the dying was done.
The close huddle of folk who had been mages turned ravaged faces to the boy and waited for his answer.
“This way,” he said, moving into the main passage and past them to the front. He struck off up the incline, the way he had been going. He had always known his way through the Holding—most of it, anyway, even in the dark where the torchman had neglected his duties. He must trust that he knew it still. He had dreamed this. He could negotiate the twists and turns. “This way!”
[18] He did not know how he made the choices he did. Sometimes space yawned under his hand, and he changed course and entered it. Sometimes he passed the branchings and continued down a straightaway or around the curve of a turn. But it was always upward, and the angle of ascent grew steeper. It took a long time for the sounds of battle to fall away, even faint as they were, even with the turnings. But when they did—because of distance, or the battle’s ending?—he realized with a jolt that he would never know the outcome. He would never know if his friends had lived or died. His path had well and truly branched away from theirs now.
He was alone.
It’s all right, he told himself. He’d been alone before, on the trail, in his campsites; he’d been alone in the beds that strangers gave him as a passing traveler, alone in the midst of tavern revelries. He’d been alone when—
“Are you all right, boy?” said the illuminator.
“It’s this cursed stone,” said the wordsmith who’d first spoken to him, who’d helped up the fallen man. Their voices were raw from screaming, the ones who still had voices at all, but he could tell them apart now. “It does something to the mind. They burned out my eyes, but my life’s passed before my mind’s eye as we walked. Don’t let it plague you, lad.”
“What’s done is done,” someone else agreed.
“It’s getting less,” said another. “It’s not all magestone now, there’s blackstone marbled in.”
“Then we’ll be in the dark, soon,” the blind wordsmith said. “I’d wager no torchman’s ever passed this way.”
“Trust the boy,” said the illuminator. “He made these tunnels. He’ll see us through.”
“Do you know where we’ll be coming out?” said another.. “There’s some of us would do best in Crown, I think, and I don’t know about the others. We’ll all need care, and healing.”
He’d thought the Ennead had broken them. But there was spirit in them still, and they were with him, and their words carried a double meaning: forgiveness. He was not alone.
They deserved an honest answer. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s sowmid. Still cold out. We’d starve. Before we got across the Aralinns. I think. We’re going through them.”
“Away from the sea, I hope,” said the wordsmith.
“Yes,” he said, though he couldn’t say why he was so certain. “Into the mountains. Through them.”
“Back into the Holding,” said the illuminator.
“I don’t know,” he said, as the marbled walls became more nightstone than magestone, the flecks of mica in the one not sparkling in the glow of the other. “Maybe,” he said.
“Let the boy be,” said the wordsmith. “Let him do what he has to do.”
[19] There were grunts from the binders, sounds that had the inflection if not the shape of words. He heard no objection in them, or accusation, or mistrust. Given time, he thought, he might come to understand them as they seemed to understand each other. Perhaps they would all make a home together somewhere, if the stewards won their battle, if the rumored Darkmage and his rebel horde succeeded in bringing the Ennead down They could start a village of their own, band together to put the horror of this place behind them forever, work to make a new life. He’d never had a real home. What joy, to find friendship, to find unity in survival, among those who understood where he had been. ...
He shook off the waking dream. They had been mages, and could be mages no more. They would fight bitterness the rest of their days. They might go mad, as mages denied the use of their light were said to. They would have families somewhere, most of them, and they would want to return and be comforted in loved ones’ arms, but they would fight pity the rest of their days, too, and helplessness. What the Ennead had done to them, no mage could heal.
But they had chosen life. They had chosen to follow him to freedom. He could not be responsible for how they used it, or hope for lasting bonds. He was still alone, in the end. No family to run to. He must see them on their way and then go on his. Whether or not he had anywhere to go.
As they came into full darkness, he let go of the future as he had let go of the past. He concentrated on the next step, on the feel of plain stone under his hand, on the cold smell of a rocky corridor new-cut in the mountain and not warded against damp. His nose caught a whiff of burning pitch as the passage abruptly narrowed, but he startled when splintery wood came under his hand, then the metal banding it. His fingers found a handle and the iron tongue that would lift a latch on the other side.
“Stop,” he said softly, before the mages blundered into him. “There’s a door.”
They stood for a few moments, silent except for labored breath. He could smell their fear, and taste his own.
“We could go back,” someone said at last. “Try a different turning.”
“No,” the boy said. “No. There’ll be doors at the end of the others, too. Or blank walls.”
“These tunnels are your mind, aren’t they?” said the rasping voice of the blind wordsmith. It was close beside him. He felt her breath on his neck. “You dreamed these passages. They’re a reflection of you.”
“I guess they are,” he said.
“They must have used you ill, that you could not even dream your way to freedom.”
Not as ill as they used you, Wordsmith. He drew himself up. “I’m going through. You should wait. Let me look.”