"Patricia A. McKillip - Lady of the Skulls" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

He would see a puff of airy sleeve, a red geranium in an upside-down skull. Lady of the Skulls, they
called her, clamouring to enter. Sometimes they were more courteous, sometimes less. She watered,
waiting for this one to call her. He did not; he guided his horse into the tower's shadow and dismounted.
He took his helm off, sat down to wait, burrowing idly in the ground and flicking stones as he watched
her sleeve sometimes, and sometimes the distant storm.

Drawn to his calm, the others joined him finally, flinging off pieces of armour. They cursed the hard
ground and sat, their voices drifting up to her in the windless air as she continued her watering.

Like others before them, they spoke of what the most precious thing of the legendary treasure might be,
besides elusive. They had made a pact, she gathered: if one obtained the treasure, he would divide it
among those left living. She raised a brow.

The one of Dulcis Isle, a dark-haired man wearing red jewels in his ears, said, "Anything of the dragon
for me. They say it was a dragon's hoard, once. They say that dragon bones are worm-holed with magic,
and if you move one bone the rest will follow. The bones will bring the treasure with them."

"I heard," said the man from Stoney Head, "there is a well and a fountain rising from it, and when the
drops of the fountain touch ground they turn to diamonds."

"Don't talk of water," one of the three thick-necked, nut-haired men of Grenelief pleaded. "I drank all
mine."

"All we must do is find the door. There's water within."

"What are you going to do?" the man of Carnelaine asked. "Hoist the water on your shoulder and carry it
out?"

The straw-haired man from Stoney Head tugged at his long moustaches. He had a plain, blunt, energetic
voice devoid of any humour. "I'll carry it out in my mouth. When I come back alive for the rest of it,
there'll be plenty to carry it in. Skulls, if nothing else. I heard there's a sorceress's cauldron, looks like a
rusty old pot—"

"May be that," another of Grenelief said.

"May be, but I'm going for the water. What else could be most precious in this heat-blasted place?"

"That's a point," the man of Dulcis Isle said. Then: "But no, it's dragon bone for me."

"More to the point," the third of Grenelief said, aggrieved, "how do we get in the cursed place?"


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"There's a lady up there watering plants," the man of Carnelaine said, and there were all their faces
staring upwards, she could have tossed jewels into their open mouths. "She knows we're here."