"Patricia A. McKillip - The Throme of the Erril of Sherill" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

eyes were the color of long, motionless, uninterrupted nights. Somewhere
beyond the dark stones was a moon-haired Cnite who loved the sad, sighing
Damsen of the King.
That Cnite came one night to the house of Magnus Thrall. Damsen, who from
the high window had seen the churttels come and go, and the daylight come and
go, saw the Cnite ride across the fields of Everywhere and thump on the
drawbridge of the house, which shut itself up at night like a grim, wordless
sprite. Her sad, sighing heart gave two quick beats. Magnus Thrall, wearing a
circle in the stones in front of a skinny, dancing elf of a flame, stopped.
“Who thumped across my drawbridge?”
“It is your Chief Cnite Caerles,” said Damsen, and her voice was like the
low, clear ripple of water across stones.
“Ha!” said Magnus Thrall. “I know what he has come for. But he cannot have
you because I need you. If you go away, I will be here alone in these dark, dank
walls. I need to look at your sad face. It comforts me.”
A tear dropped onto Damsen’s needlework and winked like a jewel among
the bright threads. She looked towards the door at the sound of footsteps. They
came through dark halls and empty rooms and lightless winding staircases
towards her, for the King had shut up his house so that he could wail and wish
alone. Spiders wove tapestry on the cold grey walls, and dust gathered,
motionless, on the stone floors. The footsteps stopped at the doorway, and the
Cnite Caerles stood in it, looking in at the warm fire, and the King, and Damsen
with her eyes like cups of sweet, dark wine. He smiled at her eyes, and they
smiled back, sadly, beneath their tears.
 “Go away,” Magnus Thrall said.
“I just arrived,” Caerles said reasonably. “My horse is in your disused
stable. He is tired and I am tired, both of us having followed the sun and the
moon to get here.”
“You are welcome,” said Damsen.
“You are not,” said Magnus Thrall. “Besides, we have no room for you.”
“I will rest content on the cold stones,” Caerles said, “and in the morning I
will come and ask something of you, and then I will leave you.”


“I will give you an answer now,” said the King. “No.”
Caerles sighed. He stepped into the room. It was thick with fur beneath the
foot, shining here and there with gold or silver, or dark, polished wood.
Damsen’s needlework hung on the walls. New flowers, pink and gold, and
midnight blue, sat in water on the table. Such things would Damsen do in
Caerles’ house, bringing with her sad, lovely thoughts. He stood tall and
straight before the King, his shirt of mail silvery as fish scale, his sword and his
shield of three moons at his side, proper and fair from his carefully brushed
moon-colored hair to his gleaming, mouse-colored boots.
“I have come for Damsen,” he said to her wet face turned towards him like a
dawn-flower. “It is the time, in my loving, when I want no long, sunlit road
between us, and no stone wall and closed door.”
“You will leave without her.”
“But why? You are growing a flower in the dark. You are shutting a rare
stone up in a locked box.”
“Why should I give my flower to you? You will shut her away in your own