"Jody Lynn Nye - School Of Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nye Jody Lynn)

“But, I could end up taking classes in an imaginary room!”
“And do you think that won’t teach you something?” Rutaro asked, wryly.
Juele laughed, caught off guard. “I guess it would. If something is too perfect, then it isn’t real.”
“Possibly. Illusion is the manipulation of light, whereas the more gross arts manipulate matter. It’s a more
subtle control of influence, I feel,” Rutaro said, with his arched eyebrows raised, as if daring her to say
otherwise. “Naturally, light would be closer to perfection than matter.”
Juele looked back at the plumes of water dancing upward, bending outward at the top and flattening out,
echoing the shape of the white towers beyond the walls of the square. There was something familiar about
the vast battlements and high, blue-roofed turrets. They looked almost perfect, Juele thought, although they
were too far away to be inside the school’s environs.
“What place is that?” she asked, pointing.
“The Castle of Dreams,” Rutaro said with satisfaction. He paused at the edge of the huge quadrangle to -
admire the effect of water, wood, stone, and shadow.
Juele dropped her voice out of respect for the King, as though he could hear her. “I had no idea how close
the school was to the palace.”
“It varies,” Rutaro said, with a grimace, “depending upon our status of the moment. If we are in vogue, as
we are at present, then we are very close to the center, indeed. If we’re out of favor, we’re on the outskirts of
town before you can say ‘paint.’”
“Oh,” said Juele. “Why are we . . . in vogue?”
“There is an exhibition of the arts being planned at present,” Rutaro said, with pride. He preened and
fingered his elaborate necktie. “A well-publicized and well-received one, hence our proximity. Her Majesty,
the Queen, is the patroness of the arts. Above all the art schools in the Dreamland, she favors us. We are
most fortunate.” Juele thought the way Rutaro said it that the queen was fortunate to have such a school to -
appreciate.
“I hope I’ll get to meet her,” Juele said, then, abashed at her own boldness, added, “or see her.”
“Count upon it,” Rutaro assured her, blithely. “Her Majesty is in and out of here all the time.”
How very exciting! Juele thought. That was something to tell Mum and Dad when she wrote home.
Royalty visiting, casually dropping by. In and out all the time. Even if she’d dared, she couldn’t have
imagined such a thing.
Another wave of influence passed, a mere correction to the one that had gone before. It turned the basins
of the fountain blue, and the artists seated around it let out a collective groan. There was much hand waving
and erasing of color in the air before they began again to capture the essence of the fountain.
“I’ve never been in Mnemosyne before,” Juele said. “We don’t have constant waves of influence running
through Wandering like this.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Rutaro said, yawning. He started walking again. Juele hoped she hadn’t alienated
him with her ignorance. He was the only person who’d spoken to her so far. He was clearly one of the senior
students. She tried to guess how old he was and found it impossible to say. He could have been twenty,
could have been thirty. She tried to reconcile his young face with his world-weary attitude. Rutaro exuded
Art. He was at home here, something she felt she had to be, had been craving to be, ever since she had first
heard of this school as a youngster.
It was a dream that she was here, almost as if she was a dreamer in the Waking World, experiencing a
nightborne fantasy in her mind. How wonderful it would be if only she could fit in here, if only they would -
accept her. She had never been very good at making friends, although she treasured the ones she had. She
suddenly felt small and lonely, and clenched her fingers on the handle of her art box.
“Rutaro?” she asked, timidly. “How long have you been at the School?”
Rutaro shrugged. “It seems like nearly forever.” He looked at her with a fond smile. “I think you are just
a little older than I was when I came here.”
He swirled his hand in a small circle, and beneath his fingers, a scene sprang up, a perfect miniature -
reality in every detail. Juele gazed at it raptly. She saw three young people—children, really—dressed in
their best clothes, huddled together in the corner of a quadrangle that was recognizably the one she stood in