"Ball, Margaret - Shadow Gate, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ball Margaret)

the soft carpets on which she walked stayed on the floor and the carved window-lattices of scented wood revealed the same view each time she looked out. Berengar escorted her to a suite of rooms overlooking the river gorge and left her in the charge of two giggling and distinctly human-looking girls who hovered around her like nervous butterflies.
"What would my lady desire?"
"A Coke and a Big Mac?" Instantly Lisa regretted the words; the younger girl's lip trembled and she looked ready to cry because she couldn't instantly understand and fulfill the request. "Food." How long had it been since she'd eaten? She had been too nervous to bother with breakfast that morningЧand then, Lisa thought on the edge of hysterical laughter, then her worst problem had been a slimy real-estate developer threatening her job! "AndЧis there somewhere I could wash?"
There was a deep tub made of something that gave the impression of being light as wood, but was as hard and shining as polished stone. Lisa sank into it and tried not to think about where the scented water that filled the tub came from; she had a feeling that the girls who waited on her probably had to carry it up more steps than she wanted to think about. I'll worry about that later. There was an appallingly long list of things being shoved into the back of her mind to deal with later; her head ached at die thought.
While she was soaking in the tub, the girls fluttered about the room and whispered to one another and whisked things in and out of cupboards. Lisa didn't much mind what they did, once they'd been made to understand that she didn't want anybody to scrub her back; and she was tired enough to be glad of the wide linen towel they held out to wrap her in when she stepped out of the water, weary enough to sit back and relax while her tangled wet hair was combed into a mass of damp mousy-blonde ringlets.
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Even the discovery that her dirty clothes had been taken away somewhereЧto be washed?Чdidn't trouble her, as the girls smilingly brought out an assortment of dresses from a carved wooden chest. She was quite prepared to let this Count Berengar give her a dress; it looked as if he could afford it. Tlie only problem was that she wasn't sure what would be appropriate attire for a common mortal being entertained in an elven count's castle. This notion that she was a lost queen of Elfhame was bad enough; she didn't want to seem to be dressing the part.
With that in mind, each dress the girls offered her seemed less suitable than the previous oneЧlonger, more flowing and bejeweled, more bedraped with gossamer and glitter. Lisa settled on what looked like a simple green shift and was dismayed to find that it changed when she put it on, clinging to her body here and developing long trailing skirts there and sparkling with a scatter of diamond-like stones that certainly hadn't been there when she chose the dress.
The food arrived as a collection of covered wooden bowls on a round tray of hammered copper, and with the food came the silver-haired man who had swept her out of the forest and into this dream-world.
"I trust you are feeling refreshed, my lady? I apologize for disturbing you again so soon, but we have little time." He seated himself cross-legged on a silk cushion. The girl who'd brought the food set down her copper tray on a low wooden tripod before Berengar and backed out of the room.
"That's perfectly all right." Lisa decided it would not compromise her position to sit down opposite Berengar. She felt silly standing over him, and anyway, the food smelled delicious. "I'm eager to settle this myself. I'd like to go home as soon as possible."
"Home? ButЧoh, you mean Poitiers?"
"Home," Lisa repeated. "TheЧthe world I came from. I want to go back."
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"My lady," said Berengar, "you are home, and this is our day of rejoicing. Long and arduous has the search been, but there can be no doubt of the results. We followed the trail you left among the stars, and beyond them, into the world of the iron-demons. We have been calling to your spirit along that trail, that you might be drawn back to the world of your birth. Only the one who passed from Elfhame into the world of the iron-demons might return by that track, and so you see that you must be the Lady Sybille, Queen of Elfhame before that Lady Alianora who now reigns in Poitiers."
"I see," Lisa said slowly, "that you're convinced of that. ButЧyou're mistaken, really you are. If I were this Sybil-whosis, I'd know it. And besidesЧ" She shook her head. "Look at me. Do I look like one of your people? Silver hair, slanting green eyes?" She tugged on one lock of light mousy hair and held it out, as much to reassure herself that she hadn't been transformed as to convince Berengar.
"Our features and coloration vary, as do those of mortals," the Count of the Garronais informed her, "and the ruling line in Poitiers is generally darker than we of the Garronais, who have preserved the pure elven blood. Your family has some ties with the Jinn of Outremer. And, too, there have been rumors of mortal blood in the line, some generations past, which might help to explain the Lady Alianora's strange taste for coupling with mortals. She herself is more golden than silver in complexion, although I must admit the resemblance between you is not so striking as I might have expected. Alianora," Berengar said, "is radiantly beautifiil. I had thought that you would have shown some of that same glory."
"You sure know how to sweet-talk a lady, Count Berengar." Lisa picked up an applelike fruit from the tray between them and bit into it, crunching as loudly and uncouthly as she could manage.
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"Excuse me? I am afraid I do not understand."
"It's not important. What we've agreed on," Lisa said, "is that I don't look like a fairy princess, I don't act like a fairy princess, and I don't think I'm a fairy princess. The weight of evidence, Count Berengar, suggests that I am not your fairy godmother. Your wizards slipped up."
"Impossible," Berengar protested. "Our sending brought you; you must be the Lady."
"Wait a minute. It's my turn to explain some things. This call that you sent outЧit was supposed to make your Lady Sybille look at a picture in a book, right?"
Berengar nodded and Lisa kept on talking before he could get a word in. "Well, your aim was slightly off. You may have been calling Sybille, but just about everybody in range heard you. Everybody in the house where I lived felt this compulsion to look at the picture. We att noticed something funny about it, something hypnotic. I just happened to be the one who looked longest and got drawn into your trap, that's all. Your Sybille is probably still back there."
"That's impossible. If you weren't Sybille, you could not have passed the Gate."
"But I did, and I'm here, and I'm not Sybille," Lisa pointed out.
Berengar rose to his feet with that fluid, graceful motion that Lisa envied whenever she saw it. "We seem to have reached an impasse. Perhaps a night's sleep will help to restore your memory."
Lisa had no intention of sleeping; she had too much thinking to do. Her dream-world, the paradise of the picture, had become an appallingly real trap and she intended to spend the quiet hours of the night figuring out a way to escape it. There must be some way to convince this charming madman that she wasn't his long-lost queen!
She fell asleep on that thought, and woke to the
96 Margaret Ball
dawn with an answer as good as any she might have achieved if she'd spent the night in planning.
"Dumb," Lisa addressed herself aloud, hitting her forehead with the heel of her hand. She pushed aside the shimmering walls of sea-green silk that enclosed the bed and ran to the window, too excited to stand still. "Dumb, dumb, dumb. If I had any more brains I'd be a half-wit. Why didn't I think of it immediately?"
"Please?"
The two girls who'd waited on her the night before, tucking her in between silky sheets on a bed that felt Wee goose down and rustled like straw, had reappeared on Lisa's first word. This morning they were determined to clothe her in the state suitable to a Queen of Elfhame. Lisa submitted to being layered in blue and crimson silks, their hems weighted with threads of gold and their wide sleeves lined with something that glowed of itself like the clouds in the morning sky. Tiny golden bells were the fastenings on the gown, and more little bells decorated die edge of the wide cloth-of-gold belt that was the finishing touch.
"Mirror, mirrorl" one of the girls cried aloud when they had done, and the window through which Lisa had been watching the dawn shimmered, clouded over and became a perfect reflection of the room in which she stood. A shiver ran down her back, involuntary as the reaction to a screech owl's hoot, and she felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickling. This is not my toorld. This isn't real. I don't like it. Until that moment, she had not realized how much she loved solid ground and houses that stayed the same shape from one day to the next and people who knew her as just-Lisa-the-receptionist and didn't expect her to perform any magic tricks more demanding than organizing Miss Penny's tenants.
The more this elven magic hummed about her,
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the more cloddish and down-to-earth and ordinary Lisa felt by contrast. Well, she wouldn't show them that she was afraid; and she wouldn't make a fool of herself by trying to act like an elven lady, either. She stood stolidly in front of the magical mirror, hands clasped to stop her fingers from trembling, and pretended to care about the reflection she saw there. The doll-like figure in blue and crimson, tinkling and sparkling with every breath, wasn't the Lisa she knew. Was nothing to do with her really. Was only anЧ illusion, like the rest of Berengar's works.
"Not bad," she said. "But the sleeves are too long. And all those jingling bells make me nervous. Could you possibly cut off a fewЧ"
Before she'd finished speaking, the bells had stilled their jangling music. The sleeves of the dress shrank before her eyes, gathering their fullness into narrow cufls about her wrists. Lisa lifted one of the bells that dangled from her girdle and inspected it. There was no way it could ring; clapper and bell were one solid piece of gilt metal, nothing more than a decorative button.
One of her handmaids gave a sharp sigh. "I wish / could do that," she murmured.
Lisa shook her head slowly. "I didn't do anything. The dress did it of itself."
"But on your command."
"You made the mirror appear ..."
"Oh, that's just one of my lord's magics," the girl explained. "Think you, how much bother would it be if we had to disturb one of you high elf-lords and ladies every time we wished a can of water heated or a window closed! So he's made those things to answer anybody's voice. But these things ..." Her fingers caressed the softness of Lisa's gathered sleeve. "These be more, more ..."
"Personal?"