"03 - Harpist in the Wind 2.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

"It's difficult enough just trying to live," he murmured, without thinking, then flushed. But her mouth twitched. He reached across to her, took her hand. "For one silver boar bristle, I would take you to Hed and spend the rest of my life raising plow horses in east Hed."
"I'll find you a boar bristle."
"How do I marry you, in this land?"
"You can't," she said calmly, and his hand slackened.
"What?"
"Only the king has the power to bind his heirs in marriage. And my father is not here. So we'll have to forget about that until he finds the time to return home."
"But, Raederle--"
She pitched a sliver of mortar across the tail feathers of a passing crow, causing it to veer with a squawk. "But what?" she said darkly.
"I can't... I can't walk into your father's land, trouble the dead as I have, nearly commit murder his hall, then take you away with me to wander through the realm without even marrying you. What in Hel's name will your father think of me?"
"When he finally meets you, he'll let you know. What I think, which is more to the point, is that my father has meddled enough with my life. He may have foreseen our meeting, and maybe even our loving, but I don't think he should have his own way in everything. I'm not going to marry you just because he maybe foresaw that, too, in some dream."
"Do you think it was that, behind his strange vow about Peven's Tower?" he asked curiously. "Foreknowledge?"
"You are changing the subject."
He eyed her a moment, considering the subject and her flushed face. "Well," he said softly, casting their future to the winds over the dizzying face of the tower, "if you refuse to marry me, I don't see what I can do about it. And if you choose to come with me--if that is what you really want--I am not going to stop you. I want you too much. But I'm terrified. I think we would have more hope of survival falling head first off this tower. And at least, doing that, we'd know where we were going."
Her hand lay on the stones between them. She lifted it, touched his face. "You have a name and a destiny. I can only believe that sooner or later you will stumble across some hope."
"I haven't seen any so far. Only you. Will you marry me in Hed?"
"No."
He was silent a little, holding her eyes. "Why?"
She looked away from him quickly; he sensed a sudden, strange turmoil in her. "For many reasons."
"Raederle--"
"No. And don't ask me again. And stop looking at me like that."
"All right," he said after a moment. He added, "I don't remember that you were so stubborn."
"Pig-headed."
"Pig-headed."
She looked at him again. Her mouth crooked into a reluctant smile. She shifted close to him, put her arm around his shoulders, and swung her feet over the sheer edge of nothingness. "I love you, Morgon of Hed. When we finally leave this house, where will we go first? Hed?"
"Yes. Hed..." The name touched his heart suddenly, like the word of a spell. "I have no business going home. I simply want to. For a few hours, at night... that might be safe." He thought of the sea, between them and his home, and his heart chilled. "I can't take you across the sea."
"In Hel's name, why not?" she said.
"It's far too dangerous."
"That makes no sense. Lungold is dangerous, and I'm going with you there."
"That's different. For one thing, no one I loved ever died in Lungold. Yet. For another thing--"
"Morgon, I am not going to die in the sea. I can probably shape water as well as fire."
"You don't know that. Do you?" The thought of her caught in the water as it heaved itself into faces and wet, gleaming forms made his voice rough. "You wouldn't even have time to learn."
"Morgon--"
"Raederle, I have been on a ship breaking apart in the sea. I don't want to risk your life that way."
"It's not your risk. It's mine. For another thing, I have been on ships from Caithnard to Kyrth and back looking for you and nothing ever happened to me."
"You could stay at Caithnard. For only a few--"
"I am not going to stay at Caithnard," she said tersely. "I am going with you to Hed. I want to see the land you love. If you had your way, I would be sitting in a farmhouse in Hed shelling beans and waiting for you, just as I have waited for nearly two years."
"You don't shell beans."
"I don't. Not unless you are beside me helping."
He saw himself, a lean, shaggy-haired man with a worn, spare face, a great sword at his side and a starred harp at his back, sitting on the porch at Akren with a bowl of beans on his knees. He laughed suddenly. She smiled again, watching him, her argument forgotten.
"You haven't done that in seven days."
"No." He was still, his arm around her, and the smile died slowly in his eyes. He thought of Hed, gripped so defenselessly in the heart of the sea, with not even the illusion of the High One to protect it. He whispered, "I wish I could ring Hed with power, so that nothing of the turmoil of the mainland could touch it and it could stay innocent of fear."
"Ask Duac. He'll give you an army."
"I don't dare bring an army to Hed. That would be asking for disaster."
"Take a few wraiths," she suggested. "Duac would love to be rid of them."
"Wraiths." He lifted his eyes from the distant forests to stare at her. "In Hed."
"They're invisible. No one would see them to attack them." Then she shook her head a little at her own words. "What am I thinking? They would upset all the fanners in Hed."
"Not if the farmers didn't know they were there." His hands felt chilled, suddenly, linked around hers. He breathed, "What am I thinking?"
She drew back, searching his eyes. "Are you taking me seriously?"
"I think... I think so." He did not see her face then, but the faces of the dead, with all their frustrated power. "I could bind them. I understand them... their anger, their desire for revenge, their land-love. They can take that love to Hed and all their longing for war... But your father... how can I wrest something out of the history of An and lead it to danger in Hed? I can't tamper with the land-law of An like that"
"Duac gave you permission. And for all my father is interested in land-law, he might as well be a wraith himself. But Morgon, what about Eliard?"