"Damar - 03 - The Hero And The Crown" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

They needed the women's voices for the songs to work—"
"That's only a pretty legend," said Teka firmly. "If the singing worked, we'd still be using it."
"Why? Maybe it got lost with the Crown. They might at least have named me Cupka or Marli or—or Galanna or something. Something to give me fair warning."
"They named you for your mother."
"Then she has to have been Damarian," Aerin said. This was also an old argument. "Aerinha was Damarian."
"Aerinha is Damarian," said Teka, "and Aerinha is a goddess. No one knows where she first came from."
There was a silence. Aerin stopped chewing. Then she remembered she was eating, swallowed, and took another bite of bread and turpi. "No, I don't suppose 1 ever thought the king would let his only, and she somewhat substandard, daughter ride into possible battle, even though sword-handling is about the only thing she's ever gotten remotely good at—her dancing is definitely not satisfactory." She grunted. "Tor's a good teacher. He taught me as patiently as if it were normal for a king's child to have to learn every sword stroke by rote, to have to practice every maneuver till the muscles themselves know it, for there is nothing that wakes in this king's child's Wood to direct it." Aerin looked, hot-eyed, at Teka, remembering again Perlith's words as he left the hall last night. "Teka, dragons aren't that easy to kill."
"I would not want to have to kill one," Teka said sincerely. Teka, maid and nurse, maker of possets and sewer of patches, scolder and comforter and friend, who saw nothing handsome in a well-balanced sword and who always wore long full skirts and aprons.
Aerin burst out laughing. "No, I am not surprised."
Teka smiled comfortably.
Aerin ate several of the mik-bars herself before dusk fell and she could slip privately out of the castle by the narrow back staircase that no one else used, and into the largest of the royal barns where the horses of the first circle were kept. She liked to pretend that the ever observant men and women of the horse, the sofor, did not notice her every time she crept in at some odd hour to visit Talat. Anyone else of the royal blood could be sure of not being seen, had they wished to be unseen; Aerin could only tiptoe through the shadows, when there ^ere
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shadows, and keep her voice down; and yet she knew she was simply recognized and permitted to pass. The sofor accepted that when she came thus quietly she wished to be left alone, and they respected her wishes; and Hornmar, the king's own groom, was her friend. All the sofor knew what she had done for Talat, so the fact that they were being kind by ignoring her hurt her less than similar adaptations to the first sol's deficiencies did elsewhere in the royal court.
Talat had been wondering what had become of her for almost two days, and she had to feed him the last three milk-bars before he forgave her; and then he snuffled her all over, partly to make sure she was not hiding anything else he might eat, partly to make sure she had in fact returned to him. He rubbed his cheek mournfully along her sleeve and rolled a reproachful eye.
Talat was nearly as old as she was; he had been her father's horse when she was small. She remembered the dark grey horse with the shining black dapples on his shoulders and flanks, and the hot dark eye. The king's trappings had looked particularly well on him: red reins and cheekpieces, a red skirt to the saddle, and a wide red breastplate with a gold leaf embroidered on it; the surka leaf, the king's emblem, for only one of the royal blood could touch the leaves of the surka plant and not die of its sap.
He was almost white now. All that remained of his youth were a few black hairs in his mane and tail, and the black tips of his ears.
"You have not been neglected; don't even try to make me think so. You are fed and watered and let out to roll in the dirt every day whether I come or not." She ran a hand down his back; one of Hornmar1 s minions had of course groomed him to a high gloss, but Talat liked to be fussed over, so she fetched brushes and groomed him again while he stretched his neck and made terrible faces of enjoyment. Aerin relaxed as she worked, and the memory of the scene in the hall faded, and the mood that had held for the last two days lightened and began to break up, like clouds before a wind.
^CHAPTER 3
THE YOUNG AERIN had worshipped Talat, her father's fierce war-stallion, with his fine lofty head and high tai!. She thought it very impressive that he would rear and strike at anyone but Hornmar or her father, rear with his ears flat back, so that his long wedge-shaped head looked like a striking snake's.
But when she was twelve years old her father had gone off to a Border battle: a little mob of Northerners had slipped across the mountains and set fire to a Damarian village. Something of the sort happened not infrequently, and in those days Arlbeth or his brother Thomar attended to such occurrences, riding out hopefully and in haste to chop up a few Northerners who had stayed to loot instead of scrambling back across the Border again at once. The Northerners knew Damarian reprisals were invariably swift, and yet always there were a few greedy ones who lingered. It was Arlbeth's turn this time; and there had been more Northerners than usual. Three men had been killed outright, and one horse; two men injured—and Talat.
Talat had been slashed across the right flank by a Northern sword, but he had carried Arlbeth safely through the battle till its end. Arlbeth was appalled when at last he was free to dismount and attend to it; there were muscles and tendons severed; the horse should have fallen when he took the blow. Arlbeth's first thought was to end it then; but he lookeH at his
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favorite horse's face, with the lips curled back from the teeth and the white showing around the eye: Talat was daring his master to kill him, and his master couldn't do it. Arlbeth thought, If he is stubborn enough to walk home on three legs, I am stubborn enough to let him try.
Aerin had been one of the first to run out of the City and meet the returning company. They were slow coming home, for Talat had set the pace, and while Aerin knew that if anything had happened to her father a messenger would have been sent on ahead, still their slowness had worried her—and she felt an awful fear squeeze her belly when she first saw Talat, his head hanging nearly to his knees, put three legs slowly down one after the other, and hop for the fourth. She only then saw her father walking on the horse's far side.
Somehow Talat climbed the last hill to the castle, and crept into his own stall, and with a terrible sigh, lay slowly down in the straw there, the first time he had been off his feet since the sword struck him. "He's made it this far," said Arlbeth grimly, and sent for the healers; but when they came to corner Talat in his stall, he surged to his feet and threatened them, and when they tried to pour a narcotic down his throat, it took four of the hafor and a chain twisted around his jaw to hold him still.
They sewed the leg up, and it healed. But he was lame, and he would always be lame. They turned him out into a pasture of his own, green with chest-high grass, cool with trees, with a brook to drink from and a pond to soak in, mud at the edge of the pond for rolling, and a nice big dry shed for rain; and Hornmar brought him grain morning and evening, and talked to him.
But Talat only grew thin and began to lose his black dapples; his coat stared and he didn't eat his grain, and he turned his back on Hornmar, for Hornmar was taking care of Arlbeth's new war-horse now.
Arlbeth had hoped Talat might sire him foals; he would like nothing better than to ride Talat again. But Talat's bad leg was too weak; he could not mount the mares, and so he savaged them, and turned on his handlers when they tried to prevent him. Talat was sent back to his pasture in disgrace. Had he been any horse but the king's favorite, he would have been fed to the dogs.
It had been over two years since Arlbeth had led Talat home
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from his last battle, and Aerin was fifteen when she ate some leaves from the surka. While they had been trying to breed Talat, Aerin had been turning corners that weren't there and falling downstairs and being haunted by purple smoke billowing from scarlet caves.
It began with a confrontation with Galanna, as so much of Aerin's worst trouble did. Galanna was the youngest of the royal cousins, but for Aerin, and she had been about to turn seven when Aerin was born. Galanna had become quite accustomed to being the baby of the family, petted and indulged; and she was a very pretty child, and learned readily how best to play up to those likeliest to spoil her. Tor was nearest her in age, only four years her elder, but he was always trying to pretend that he was just as grown up as the next lot of cousins, Perlith and Thurny and Greeth, who were six, seven, and ten years older than he was. Tor was no threat. The next-youngest girl cousin was fifteen years older than Galanna, and she, poor Katah, was plain. (She was also, very shortly after Aerin's birth, married off to one of the provincial barons, where, much to Galanna's disgust, she thrived and became famous for settling a land dispute in her husband's family that had been the cause of a blood feud for generations.)
Galanna was not at all pleased by Aerin's birth; not only was Aerin a first sol, which Galanna would never be unless she managed to marry Tor, but her mother died bearing her, which made Aerin altogether too interesting a figure within the same household that Galanna wished to continue to revolve around herself.
Aerin was by nature the son of child who got into trouble first and thought about it later if at all, and Galanna, in her way, was quite clever. Galanna it was who dared her to eat a leaf of the surka; she dared her by saying that Aerin would be afraid to touch the royal plant, because she was not really of royal blood: she was a throwback to her mother's witch breed, and Arlbeth was her father in name only. If she touched the surka, she would die.
At fifteen Aerin should already have shown signs of her royal blood's Gift; usually the Gift began to make its presence known—most often in poltergeist fits—years younger. Galanna had contrived to disguise her loathing for her littlest cousin for several years after her temper tantrums upon Aerin's birth had not been a complete success; but lately* had
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occurred to an older Galanna that if Aerin really was a throw-back, a sport, as she began to appear truly to be, Galanna had excellent reason to scorn and dislike her: her existence was a disgrace to the royal honor.
They made a pair, facing off, standing alone in the royal garden, glaring at each other. Galanna had come to her full growth and beauty by that time: her blue-black hair hung past her hips in heavy waves, and was artfully held in place by a golden webwork of fine thread strung with pearls; her cheeks were flushed becomingly with rage till they were as red as her lips, and her huge black eyes were opened their widest. Her long eyelashes had almost grown back since the night Aerin had drugged her supper wine and crept into her bedroom later and cut them off. Everyone had known at once who had done it, and Aerin, who in general held lying in contempt, had not bothered to deny it. She had said before the gathered court— for Galanna, as usual, had insisted on a public prosecution— that Galanna should have been grateful she hadn't shaved her head for her; she'd been snoring like a pig and wouldn't have wakened if she'd been thrown out her bedroom window. Whereupon Galanna had gone off in a fit of strong hysterics and had to be carried from the hall (she'd been wearing a half-veil that covered her face to her lips, that no one might see her ravaged features), and Aerin had been banished to her private rooms for a fortnight.
Aerin was as tall as Galanna already, for Galanna was small and round and compact, and Aerin was gangly and awkward; and Aerin's pale skin came out in splotches when she was angry, and her fiercely curly hair—which when wet from the bath was actually longer than Galanna's—curled all the more fiercely in the heat of her temper, and for all the pins that attempted to keep it under control. They were alone in the garden; and whatever happened Galanna had no fear that Aerin would ever tale-bear (which was another excellent reason for Galanna to despise her), so when Aerin spun around, pulled half a branch off the surka, and stuffed most of it into her mouth, Galanna only smiled. Her full lips curved most charmingly when she smiled, and it brought her high cheekbones into delicate prominence.
Aerin gagged, gasped, turned a series of peculiar colors which ended with grey, and fell heavily to the ground. Cabana noticed that she was still breathing, and therefore waited
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a few minutes while Aerin twitched and shook, and then went composedly to find help. Her story was that she had gone for a walk in the garden and found Aerin there. This, so far as it went, was true; but she had been planning to find Aerin alone in the garden for some time, that she might say certain things to her. She had thought of those certain things while she had been keeping to her rooms while her eyelashes grew out again.
Aerin was sick for weeks. Her mouthful had given her mad hallucinations of men with translucent blue skin and six-legged riding beasts, and of a pale face terribly like her own with a dull grey band wound about its temples, bending down at her through clouds of smoke, and of a cave with five walls that glittered as though it were walled with rubies. The worst of these then began to wear off, and she could again see the walls of her own room around her, and Teka's face bending over her, half angry and half frightened; but she still had dizzy spells and stomachaches, and these lasted a very long time. She knew this was not how it should be for a king's daughter, just as Galanna had said; and a depression she would not admit further slowed her recovery.
"You idiot!" Tor yelled at her. "You bonehead, you mud-brain, you oozog, you stzik! How could you do such a thing?" He tried to remind her of the stories of the surka; he said did she remember by chance that the stuff was dangerous even to those of the royal house? True, it did not kill them; true, a leaf of it bestowed superhuman strength and the far-seeing eyes of a bird of prey to one of royal blood, or, if the Gift were strong enough, true visions; although this last was very rare. But when the effect wore off, in several hours or several days, the aftereffects were at best mortal exhaustion and blurred sight-sometimes permanent. Had she forgotten the tale of King Merth the Second, who kept himself on the battlefield for a fortnight, never resting, by the virtue of the surka, pausing only to chew its leaves at need? He won the battle, but he died even as he proclaimed his victory. He looked, when they buried him, like an old, old man, though he was only a year past twenty.