"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Black Throne 01 - The Black Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

He stood outside the Student’s Hut in the Protectors Village and waited for Madot.
Dawn had just touched the tips of the mountains, the sunlight a pale yellow as it rose over
the ancient peaks. It would take another hour before the light reached him.
The village was quiet. Many of the Shaman were already busy with their daily tasks.
Others, the night guardians, slept. It had taken him almost a year to get used to the
rhythms of the Protectors. They gathered much of their food, and the rest was brought to
them by the nearby Fey Infantry garrison, a custom that was hundreds, perhaps
thousands of years old. No commerce took place here. Protectors Village served two
functions: it housed the Shaman dedicated to the guarding of the Place of Power, and it
gave the young apprentices a school of sorts, a place to train where they would be
undisturbed by the outside world.
Fifty stone huts huddled on the plateau. They were round and made out of mountain
rock. They had no windows and only one door. Some of the huts were built for several
inhabitants, like the Student’s Hut. Some were built for one person: a full-fledged Shaman
who had to, by rights, live alone.
Gift wasn’t a Shaman yet, and he wouldn’t be for a long time. He had decades of
training ahead of him. Madot, his main teacher, believed that he could cut his training
short because of the power of his magic, the unprecedented strength of his Vision, but she
was only guessing. There had never been an apprentice like Gift in the entire history of
the Fey. His magic was unique—his heritage was unique—and because of those things, his
future was uncertain.
He rubbed his hands together in the early morning chill. Madot had instructed him to
wear only his apprentice’s robes. She was going to take him to the Place of Power, several
years before most apprentices were ever taken. It was said that a goat herder found this
cave, and took his family inside. When they came out, they were Fey.
Simply entering the cave did not create a Fey. There was magic in a Place of Power
that when tapped, altered everything. That much he knew without being taught. He had
discovered a second Place of Power fifteen years before, and had lived in it for several
weeks. There he had seen things he still did not comprehend, things that had changed his
life forever.
He would not be standing here if he hadn’t lived in that place.
He shifted from one bare foot to the other. His toes were growing cold. The bottoms of
his feet had become hard from use. He rarely wore shoes—they were frowned upon by
the Shaman—but usually he was moving. He almost never stood still.
Madot saw that as a flaw. She saw many things about him as flaws. He had been raised
by adoptive parents who had no idea how to control his Visionary magic, and he had used
his talents in ways that the Shaman here frowned upon. That his spells had been
successful didn’t matter, nor did the fact that with them he had saved hundreds of lives.
That he had misused the magic was the important thing, the thing they wanted to corral
in him.
Wild magic, or so Madot called it. She said his wild magic and his impatience were his
greatest faults. Until he had come here, he thought his wild magic was his greatest asset.
He hadn’t even known he was impatient until he had come to a place where time seemed
to have stopped.
There were no regular schedules as there had been when he lived in a Fey military
camp, no rhythms as there had been when he lived in the rural areas of his homeland,
Blue Isle. Here the Shaman went about their business as if they were being governed
from within. He always felt at loose ends. He wanted to stay busy, although sometimes
there was nothing to do.
Madot said he had to get used to quiet. He thought that the most difficult thing of all.