"Andre Norton - WW - 18 Port of Dead Ships" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

the same color--blue--and, as they fell, they shaped, as cleanly as if I had pushed them, into the shape
of a dart head pointing to the door. I felt as if someone had given me a sharp order. It was time to be
about business as yet unknown to me.

"You have," the woman said to me, "the talent. This is uncanny--ward yourself well, Borderer, for you
will find few to welcome you." She tossed the pouch to me as if she wished it quickly away from her.

I decided it was time I searched for Kemoc in Lormt once more but first I helped that awkward servant
enwall his mistress's herb garden. When I finally rode forth there was in me even a small hope that I might
find knowledge to buy me freedom from my lurching steps.

Only Kemoc was gone when once more I entered that uncloseable gate. Ouen told me that Kemoc had
been greatly excited when he had ridden forth a tenth day earlier, nor had he mentioned where he was
going.

Because I did not know his goal and because I believed that my handicap would make me a hindrance
to him, I settled in the room which had been his, paying into the common fund of the scholars the last of
my small store of coins. For a short time a shameful weakness of spirit took me and I railed at fate.

But I roused myself to fight such despair and now and then I tossed the crystals. Thus I began to learn
that I could influence the patterns which came, even move separate ones by staring at them.

That drove me to the reading halls, though I had no idea what I sought. I drew upon scraps I had found
in Kemoc's room on which he had scrawled some results of his own delving. But I felt I faced a maze in
which I could be easily caught, for I had no one purpose.

I strove to speak to one of the scholars who seemed more approachable than the others, Morfew, who
welcomed me as a pupil.

When it seemed that I must have action, for it was not easy to settle into a niche of books and scrolls, I
went into the fields of the farms which fed the establishment and worked, exercising my leg and forcing
myself to walk without a staff. Though I had not sought her out, Pyra came to me and offered surcease
from pain, greatly in agreement with what I strove to do for myself. She was a woman of great inner
strength and it was only by chance that I discovered what else she was. For one day, when a stumble in a
field brought back a measure of my pain, she found me sitting in the hall, crystals in hand.

I threw them in idleness and those of blazing yellow separated from the others and formed a pattern to
seem a pair of eyes. Such eyes I had seen in a bird's head and these appeared to live for a moment and
gaze at Pyra. I

heard a quickly drawn breath and at that moment, as if I had heard it shouted aloud I was sure. I
glanced from those eyes on the table to the eyes in the woman's head, and I said to myself, "Falconer!"
Though few, if any, men not of their own breed had ever seen one of their women.

She put out her hand and caught mine, turning it palm up, and she studied that calloused flesh as one
might study the roll on the table. There was a frown on her face; as she abruptly dropped her hold on me
she said only:

"Tied, Duratan--how and why I do not know." Swiftly then she left me.