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

You do not remember why they are frightened of you?”
I shook my head, remembering nothing of the days, the weeks before I had awakened under
his care. It seemed very quaint that folk should be afraid of me when I was myself so
terrified—no, I would not think of that fear. I had to speak, quickly.
“Why was I kept in the prison pit?” I whispered.
Thongs binding my wrists, padded, the cuts of them on my arms even so ... He stood silent
for the span of a long breath, and I would not look at him for fear that I should see pity in his
eyes.
“I do not call you madman, Archer,” he said finally, “but there are those who do.”
Madman! I was no madman—but how could I say that, I who could not remember my own
name?
“Is that what Istas called me?”
“No.”
Silence. A merciful exhaustion had numbed me, so that silence no longer troubled me.
“Will you sleep now?” Kor asked at last.
“I think so,” I muttered, still not meeting his eyes.
“Rest in Sakeema, then,” he said, and he went out and left me.

Chapter Two
Sometime after the lamp had started to flicker and smoke I awoke and used the accursed
cuckpot, and scowled at it. Then I blundered out. Sometime past dawn, for faint daylight
filtered down into the passageway from fissures and from weapon slots fashioned in the
rock where the walls were thin. Birc lay dozing just beyond the entry to my chamber. He
jumped up when he heard me and pointed his spear at my gutknot, shaking so badly he
could not hold it steady—the shaft wobbled crazily. But the flint head was chipped to a keen
edge, fit to tear my innards out, not to be meddled with. And a scared man who stands his
ground is as dangerous as a frightened horse. I stopped and leveled a look at him.
“I am going to get something to eat,” I told him, speaking slowly and hoping he could
understand me. “I will no longer have your king playing the manservant.” I waited, watching
the spearhead waver. “What, am I a prisoner after all?”
Losing patience, I sidestepped and pushed the spear away with my hand, then shoved past
him. He could have attacked me from behind, but he did not. Instead, he trailed after me as I
found my way back to the room with the cooking fire. It was full of people taking their
morning meal, and for the first time I saw how the folk of the Seal Kindred looked. I liked
them at once, for something about them made me think of Sakeema’s creatures, of
trim-thewed animals with gentle dark eyes. Their faces were round and smooth, shell-brown
with a pink tinge, their hair brown and soft and cropped short, man and woman alike, except
that the maidens wore theirs in a long cloud. I saw several maidens whom I fancied, even at
a glance, though they were clothed too modestly for me to see much. These people chose to
keep warm, it seemed, and they had been trading with the Herders, for they all wore
woolens as well as furs. This much I saw in a breathspan, and then they spied me and
scattered with a noise and rush like that of startled quail, snatching up their babies and
young children and crowding out of the several entries.
One of them did not run: Istas. She stood her ground and glared at me with a look of black
hatred. But she did not speak, and in a moment she turned and followed stiffly after the
others. I was left alone except for Birc, behind me. I looked around at him. He was keeping a
cautious distance.
“Kor spoke to her, bidding her hold her tongue,” I said to him, guessing, and after a long
pause he curtly nodded.
It gave me a peculiar feeling, that she hated me, that the others ran from me. But I shrugged