"Nancy Springer- Sea King Trilogy 01 - Madbond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

“If you are king here,” I said to Korridun, “how is it that no one waits on you?”
He gave me a look so wry it might have been a smile, though in fact he did not smile. “It is
the custom of the Seal Kindred to humble their kings,” he said.
I ate, and regarded him curiously. He was half a head shorter than I, and perhaps too
slender to be very strong—so I thought at the time. But he was trimly thewed in a way that I
never would be, with a centered look about him, a control. It was in his face, too, a
quietness. Something about the glance of his eyes, as if Sakeema’s time looked out of
them, deep time, creature time, the always now. And his face comely enough so that no
woman, I thought, would scorn him. But for all that, he hardly seemed a proper king to me. A
young shaman, perhaps, but a king should be thewed for war. I bore in my mind the image of
a king—
And as I thought it, the fell arrow of fear pierced me again, and all seemed black.
“Archer?” Korridun inquired, seeing pain in me. So I supposed.
“Nothing. A cramp in my gut.” I straightened and faced him. A smoldering, reasonless anger
started in me because he dared to be kind to me, so quaint are the ways of petty pride. And
I decided that he might be king to others, but he was no king of mine. I would not call him by
the king’s name, Korridun, an ancestral name of his royal line. Nor would I call him Rad, as
his loved ones might. I would take his kingly name and make it smaller, as I felt myself
lessened. I would call him Kor.
“Kor,” I tried it on my tongue.
His head turned to me, his face grave, courteous. “Yes?”
He was all comity, the courtesy so inborn that he was likely not himself aware of it. I ducked
my head in angry discomfort, blundering for something to say. “Does—does no one call you
Kor?”
“You may, if you like.” He got up and found me a slab of jannock, a sort of oatmeal bread.
“Do you yet remember your own name?” he asked as he handed it to me.
“No.”
“A terrible loss. Your very self.”
It troubled me no whit, as it kept the blackness at bay. I did not answer.
“What do you know of yourself, then?”
I shrugged. “I am of the Red Hart.” Of course, with my hair as yellow as bleached prairie
grass, the braids of it lying long on my bare shoulders—men of my people seldom wore
much above the waist. Deerskin below, lappet and leggings. Boots of thick bison leather on
my feet. These were gear such as Red Hart hunters wore. “I have shot the deer in the
highmountain meadows, and I shoot them well.” Deer were the food and warmth of my
people, but I hated to cause them pain, deer or any of the creatures of Sakeema, so I had
shot my bolts at deer of straw through the hot suns of many summers until I had learned to kill
cleanly with a single swift arrow to break the neck. This mercy lay close to my heart, and I
remembered it. “I have hunted with the hawk also, and the hawks fly well for me. I have fought
against the Otter River Clan when they held the Blackstone Path.” Again, I had tried always
to kill with mercy, and I remembered that I had not liked that killing. “I have ridden against the
Fanged Horse Folk when they raided us, and I have fought against the Cragsmen.”
“Do you remember your tribesfellows who fought at your side?”
“I remember in a general way only.”
“What are you doing in my Holding?”
“I do not know.”
“Did you come here to fight?”
For the first time I felt some small qualm, not knowing who I was or why I was there in the
land of his people. As a shield, I turned the question back on him. “Have you given me
reason to fight you?”