"Michelle West - Echoes" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

"What did you say?"

"I—I think—I think he's right."

The master's pause was longer than Arkady's. Kallandras did not realize that he was not breathing until
breath returned.

The master nodded. "If you do not feel comfortable with real weapons, you may have the practice ones.
But we will keep the real until you require them."

The old man came in the mornings.

"You do not speak of your gift."

Kallandras did not speak at all. The moment stretched and thinned until the old man broke it by
chuckling. It was not the sound he expected to hear.

"Let me speak of mine, then, boy."

Kallandras said nothing.

"I can speak in a way that forces men to listen." He paused. "I almost never do. But of all aspects of my
gift, it is the one most feared, and with cause.
"Let me speak of the others. Do you sing, boy?"

"No. Singing is for girls," he added bitterly. His father's words. But bitter or no, angry or no, he missed
that man; that man had died with the knowledge of his only son's location clenched between closed teeth.

"It is for brothers, not for girls. And no voice is as strong, no voice is a powerful, in either sweetness or
sorrow, as the voice of one born with the gift." The old man paused. "I sing more frequently than I
command. But I do not sing overmuch.

"But there is one thing that I always do; it is as natural as breathing or sleeping."

Kallandras did not want to hear the old man speak. He was tired. The need for sleep thinned his nerve,
robbing him of the composure that he clung to in the face of the Labyrinth and its masters.

"I listen. I cannot help but listen. Every sentence, every word, every syllable, become lines of a map, and
between those lines fall cities, if the speaker is careless. I hear a lie almost before it is finished; I hear
truth in just the same way. I hear fear, angry, worry; I hear envy, desire, pain."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"I am your mirror, Kallatin. I want you to learn."

He rose, then, and bowed. He did not speak again with the old man that day.

Four of the young men had chosen practice weapons; two pairs. The blades were unsharpened, the
guards blunted; the weight however was almost the same. They were mocked for it; the other boys,
fourteen in total, had chosen to brave the more deadly blades. After all, they were of an age, among their