"Boyer, Elizabeth - Thrall And The Dragon's Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Boyer Elizabeth)
"No, you can't tell him unless you want to see me burned alive as a witch. It's a curse I'm under, and it doesn't concern youЧvery much, that is, except in a general sense. But you must stop plaguing me about it, because I absolutely refuse to allow you to become involved. I don't want you to be hurt, and I fear there's really not much anyone can do for me, unless he's adept at breaking spells. So don't ask me any more questions if you wish to regard yourself as my friend."
The horse began to stumble and sway dangerously as they approached the stable. Brak had to push him from behind and Ingvold pulled. The poor creature collapsed in a heap just inside the door. His eyes closed and he breathed a long, shuddering sigh. Brak made sure the horse was still alive, then found a tattered blanket and some old rags to cover him with, adding armfuls of straw.
"What he needs is a warm drink," Brak said anxiously. "Look how he shivers and shakes. Is there a bucket here?"
"Go and tell Katla what you need. I'm sure she'll understand," Ingvold said, sitting down on the straw beside the horse's head.
Brak started for the door, then turned. "Ingvold, I'm not asking questions any longer; I'm going to say something that might be important. I'm not a brave fellow, but when Pehr gets back, he'll supply all the courage and I the determination. We'll help you break this curse so that you can be free of Hjordis and Myrkjartan, if you'll only tell us what to do to help. I'd be willing to comb Skarpsey from one end to the other, or to set out in a boat, or to declare myself an outlaw, whatever it takes to rid you of that awful woman Hjordis. I know how it is to be a homeless orphan, since a whale upset my father's barge when I was a tiny child. If not for the kindness of Thorsten, I would have perished long ago, which is what might happen to you before much longer, if Hjordis and Myrkjartan were speaking the truth."
Ingvold smiled sadly. "Yes, I suppose they were. But it's no good talking about it, Brak, so you may as well go get a bucket of warm water so that we can care for our unfortunate friend. You're a stout, kind fellow, the first ever to show me any sympathy in my plight; however, when you discover the truth about me and what has happened here, you'll be glad enough to forget about me." She gave him a push toward the house, saying Katla would know exactly what he needed.
When Brak made his request for warm water from Katla, she glared at him a moment in wild surmise. "For what horse? There are no horses here but your own," she rasped, slopping water on his foot as she shoved past him roughly and hurried to the stable. "Come along, you buffoon, I'll show you what we do have."
Brak followed slowly, wondering what the madwoman meant. Gingerly, he opened the door to peer in, and Katla assisted him by seizing his collar and hauling him inside as if she were landing a stubborn fish.
"See there!" she declared triumphantly. "She's done it again, and your educated friend has reaped the benefits of a magic he swears doesn't exist!"
Brak stumbled forward, unable to believe he was actually seeing Pehr lying, pale and still, under the old rags and straw he had used to cover the sick horse. Falling onto his knees, he saw that Pehr was breathing, although he was covered with a fine sweat and shivering violently. Then Brak looked up to find Ingvold, who had vanished. Only the ugly, disconcerting face of Katla leered back at him. He administered a covert pinch to himself, a painful one.
"I must be dreaming," he managed to stammer, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head in the approved manner for awakening oneself. "The horse I thought I sawЧwell, I'm sure I sawЧbut how did PehrЧand IngvЧer, Grima, where is she?"
Katla cackled cozily. "Yes, that's right. You catch on quickly, dear boy. Grima is a hag. She changes people to horses and rides them all night whenever the full moon appears. It's a curse put on her by the Queen of the Dark Elves, who pays me to keep the girl miserable. Oh, the blisters I've seen, and the poor fellows who have diedЧ"
"Pehr mustn't die!" Brak gasped. "He's the next chieftain of the Quarter! His father would hold me personally accountable if Pehr died!"
Katla stooped, with many grunts and creaks, to inspect
Pehr more critically. "Not a pretty pastime for a pasty-faced little chit of a girl. You're lucky it was your young master she chose, and not you, or all that lard on your ribs might have melted and gone to your brain. He's strong, though; I suppose he'll get over it, if a chill doesn't take him off first. Help me carry him into the house."
"A hag? Grima?" Brak awkwardly tried to help as Katla bundled Pehr up in her arms, leaving Brak to carry his feet. "I'd never thought of a young girl being a hag. They're usually old and ugly, likeЧlikeЧ"
"Like me, you mean?" Katla was so amused she whistled through her nose. She deposited Pehr on the untanned fleeces. "The young ones are the worst. Nobody suspects them, they trick you, and there you are with your legs run off and your feet worn to the bloody bone." She glowered in Brak's face a moment for effect, then hauled off Pehr's shredded boots, revealing as nice a collection of fat, white blisters as Brak had ever seen.
"I've seen far worse," Katla grumbled as she began smearing the blisters with a smelly, yellowish paste that stank like rancid tallow with some herbs in it. "There was a fellow at Brikarsnef, and before that it was at Throstrsstead. The only thing that saved this one was the fact that we're very close to the other world." Her last words were barely distinguishable from a growl as she attended to Pehr's injuries.
"Other world? I thought that tunnel was rather peculiar. Was it made by dark elves, perhaps?" Brak inquired.
Katla's head jerked up and she glared at Brak like a berserker meditating an attack. With a sinister rattling in her throat, she snarled, "You'd better mind your own business or you'll find yourself neck over ears in the worst sort of trouble you can imagine. If you've seen something, you'd better forget it as fast as you can, and even then you'd better watch over your shoulder when you're out on a dark night. And ifЧ" She hitched herself closer to Brak, holding him transfixed with her horrible gaze, which seemed to peer into all the corners of his being. "And if you should be so foolish as to talk about whatever you might have seen this past night, if you should decide to throw away your life and perish very unpleasantlyЧ" She did not finish her threat; her voice trailed away to that deathlike rattle in her throat, and her stare became more piercing, more fraught with menace. Then she closed her mouth with a snap, which startled Brak into uttering a frightened yelp. She finished her job of bandaging Pehr's feet, adding when she was done, "If you ever come back to this place, you won't find us. With this sort of thing going on every full moon, we're not permitted to remain long, as you can imagine. You weren't thinking of vengeance, were you?" She leaned forward to eye Brak again.
Brak alternately shook and nodded his head, then shook it again emphatically, not daring to say a word.
Katla grunted. "Good. You may leave as soon as your friend awakens and is able to ride."
Pehr slept the rest of the day and awoke at sundown, very tired and peevish, mistaking the red glow of sunset for dawn. "Why didn't you wake me up earlier? We should have left hours ago!" He threw off the fleeces with disgust. "Brak, don't just stand there, get my boots. We must be off immediately, or we'll miss my father and we'll miss going to the law-reading, and it's all your fault, Brak. Thorsten hates to wait, and I'm starving, too, but there's no time to waste by eating." He grabbed his possessions and tried to stand up, adding a roar of pain and astonishment. Glaring at his bandaged feet, which he. had instantly removed from the floor, he plummeted back into the smelly fleeces, bellowing, "My feet! What in the name of Odin's goatsЧ Brak! What happened to my feet? And look at my boots! Worn out, right down to the very bottoms, unless some beggar has traded with me while we were asleep. Brak, why weren't you watching better? Oof! My feet! I can't walk! I can tell by your face you're not telling me the truth, Brak."
Brak's face was a constant traitor to his inner emotions. It blushed pink when he was guilty, white when he was fearful, and now it was a mixture of both. He stammered, "Not now, Pehr. I'll tell you later, when you're more in the mood. It's really nothing too serious, actually, except it's not sunrise, it's sunset, and we've probably missed Thorsten, and your feet will be sore for a while, but perhaps we should stay here another nightЧ" He glanced around at the bulky, black figure of Katla rattling and grumbling in the kitchen.
Brak opened and closed his mouth. It was no good explaining anything, not with Katla listening to every word; and worse yet, Faxi was lost in the tunnel under the barrow. With a despairing glance at Katla, he began gathering together their possessions, surrendering his own fleece slippers to Pehr, who growled and groaned ill-humoredly. By way of helping, Pehr hung his pouches and bags around Brak's neck and leaned on him heavily to rise to his feet.
"You're going, then?" Katla favored them with a scowl. "Well, I never promised you any great hospitality."
"But my feet are half murdered!" Pehr exclaimed. "And no one will tell me anything about it! I demand to knowЧ"
"Where's Grima, that little wretch?" Katla muttered unhelpfully. "She should be here fixing supper, and I haven't seen her do a stroke of work all day. Come to think of itЧ" She cocked her head to one side and screwed up her face horribly in suspicious thought. Dropping her spoon, she hurried outside with surprising speed and summoned Grima with a piercing shriek.
Pehr paid little attention. "I must have stuck them into the fire, but I can't imagine how I'd sleep through the experience. Why won't you tell me what really happened, Brak?"
"I'm afraid you won't believe me," Brak replied in a doleful voice, considerably muffled in Pehr's saddle pouch. "In fact, I know you won't believe me."
"I don't care if I believe you or not," Pehr said. "Just tell me what happened." He leaned on Brak more heavily, and they staggered toward the door.
Katla burst into the house, glaring wildly from Pehr to Brak. "She's gone! Escaped! Vanished! What did you young villains have to do with it? I just found your old speckled nag grazing among the barrows, so I know you were there last night." She jabbed a finger at Brak. "You'll find out the price of being bold enough to poke and pry into other people's business. You'll be sorry, both of you, for what you've seen. I wouldn't be surprised if Myrkjartan himself didn't decide to pay you a call. He's a necromancer, you know, and he prefers dead things to troublesome live ones. Blast you both and that wretched girl!"
Brak cringed. "I didn't follow to snoop, I only wanted to find Pehr. Once I got there, I couldn't very well leave, could I?"
Katla gave an awful shriek and grabbed two fistfuls of her hair. "Then it's true! You followed her! Hjordis will be wild with fury! She'll come after you, tooЧand perhaps me for letting Ingvold escape." The thought was enough to stop her in mid-grab for her hair.
"We didn't have anything to do with your girl's running off," retorted Pehr, "and it's a shocking breach of hospitality to accuse us of it. I hope I never have the misfortune of being lost near your house again. It would be better to take our chances in a sheep shed. If you'll have the goodness to saddle our horses, we'll take ourselves out of here, with the greatest of relief on both sides, I'm sure."
Katla nodded curtly. Whirling around, she screamed out the door for the ill-favored shepherd to saddle their unwanted guests' horses at once.
Brak was delighted to be reunited with his old Faxi, who nickered at him and waggled his ears reproachfully. Brak rubbed his neck and Katla glowered.
"Yes, there he is, the old speckled nuisance," she growled. "You wouldn't get him back twice from where he's been."
"What was he doing straying in the barrow mounds?" Pehr demanded in a greater fury of mystification.
"He escapedЧfromЧfromЧ" Brak stopped and looked at Katla.
"Escaped, indeed!" Katla snorted. "Probably Myrkjartan let him out to see if he'd return to his inquisitive master; that way Myrkjartan would know who was spying on him last night."
Brak paled, but Pehr gave him a sharp nudge. "Help me up; I can't manage alone. Then bid our kind hostess farewell and thank her for her gracious accommodations. You'd better ask her which way leads to Vigfusstead, unless you want to wander back here again after dark."
"You needn't bother with your empty thanks," Katla snapped, her eyes darting around in fear. "Vigfusstead is straight north. You'll be able to see its lights from the fell Чall the more fools you are for traveling so close to nightfall with the Myrkriddir about."
Brak felt his blood run cold. Hastily he boosted Pehr into his saddle, nearly tossing him off the horse's far side. His legs were shaking so hard he could scarcely climb onto Faxi's back. His grandmother had told him about the Myrkriddir, bog corpses who rode ghostly horses around the skies at night, searching for hapless travelers to take captive and make them MyrkriddirЧdead, but not permitted to rest peacefully.
"Myrkriddir!" Pehr said loftily. "That's just an old superstition. We don't believe in that nonsense at Thorstensstead, and you'd do well to forget it, too." He turned his horse and rode away without a backward glance.
Brak darted a last look at the lowering Katla, who stood muttering and hugging her sides. She grinned at him craftily, which made him recoil with horror.
"He'll be after you," she whispered, wagging a finger, then drawing it across her throat with unmistakable significance.
Brak suddenly felt chilled and frightened by something too strange and mustily ancient for him to comprehend. He urged Faxi ahead at the old horse's top speed, which was a rolling, complaining canter. He soon settled down to a methodical trot, overtaking Pehr. At the brow of the fell, they halted and Pehr pointed out Vigfusstead, still basking in the lingering, cheerful light of the setting sun.
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