"Boyer, Elizabeth - Thrall And The Dragon's Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Boyer Elizabeth)

"There it is, just as I told you. I knew we weren't far from the road," Pehr said.
"Do we have to stop here?" Brak inquired. "Why not just hurry on before it gets cold and dark?"
"The horses need to rest a moment," Pehr answered. "I'm not afraid of the dark. Are you?"
"I certainly am," Brak declared. "After what I've seenЧ" He stopped himself, wondering if he dared to tell Pehr about Ingvold.
"And besides," Pehr continued, "I want to hear your explanation for my feet being nearly destroyed. We'll sit here all night if you want to, or you can tell me quickly and we'll get to Vigfusstead before it's pitch-dark."
Brak began with a sigh. "Well, you remember the little kitchen girl who first let us in, and how she warned us to go away before something dreadful happened?" Pehr glowered at him impatiently, and he hurried on. "I was sure you'd remember her; it was only last night, after all. Yes, as I was going to say, sheЧshe has a peculiar affliction, and rather a dangerous one, but you were fortunate, more fortunate than others, since the other world is rather close, so you didn't have to travel far."
"This tells me nothing," Pehr said, "and it's getting darker."
In a faint voice Brak said, "She's a hagЧone of those who turn men into horses and ride them all night, and often the poor fellows die. She doesn't mean toЧI mean, she does it because a curse has been put on her by the Queen of the Dark Elves, a most evil-looking creature called Hjordis. There's something Hjordis wants from Ingvold, a locket she wears around her neck, but someone called the Rhbus protects Ingvold, and she'll die before she gives the necklace to Hjordis. There's something about it that gives a person great power, so Hjordis is making Ingvold suffer until she gives up and joins Hjordis' causeЧ whatever it is. An old Alfar named Dyrstyggr is also important somehow, but I was rather frightened, and it was all so sudden that I didn't really catch it allЧ"
"I fear you'll catch it in a far different manner if you tell anyone else that story and expect him to believe it," Pehr interrupted. "That's the most fanciful lie you've ever told, and you're not even blushing, Brak. All these years I've been trying to teach you to lie, and here you tell a story like that without even stopping to think."
"I'm not lying," Brak said indignantly, glancing over his shoulder in the direction from which they had just come. "Ingvold changed you into a horse and went riding out to those barrows and down a long tunnel into the earth. I followed because I thought it was you trying to desert me at that awful house so you could laugh at me later. How else could a person hurt his feet so badly and never know it, unless it was an enchantment?"
Pehr said nothing to that. He wiggled his toes and grimaced. "I hope it was a fine horse, and not a nag like Faxi," he said facetiously.
"Oh, it was a very fine horse, Pehr. I can't imagine what difference it should make, unless you're worried about keeping up appearances, I suppose. If you'll only listen a moment, I'll explain."
Pehr interrupted with an impatient snort. "Then tell me how Faxi came to be wandering among the barrow mounds. That should be another fanciful story, I suppose."
"Then you have no recollection at all ofЧanything?" Brak looked at Pehr anxiously, and Pehr glared back at him.
"Certainly not, except what you'd expect," Pehr snapped. "I know you're going to give me some fantastic tale about magic and elves, aren't you?"
"Not exactly. I had to leave Faxi behind in the tunnel because dawn was near, and that's how Myrkjartan and Hjordis will follow us, to see who was spying on them last night."
Pehr shook his head and scowled at his slippered feet. "Hags, necromancers, dark elves," he growled. "All I can say is, you'd better keep this to yourself. Being hagridden isn't the sort of thing you want everyone to know about." He gathered up his reins and sent his horse down the fell at a reckless, plunging gallop.
Brak let Faxi pick his own way down at a casual amble. He glanced back and saw Katla's house squatting in the gathering night shadows. Unwillingly, his eyes sought out the barrow mounds, their tops still rimmed with sunlight, which deepened the shadows pooling among them. At such a great distance, the shadows looked almost solid enough to touch. In fact, they looked almost like a cluster of horses and riders advancing as the sun declined, loping silently from the barrows toward the fell where Brak and Faxi were outlined against the flaming sky.

Chapter 3

A warm welcome and a generous supper awaited them at Vigfusstead. Pehr was furious to discover that Thorsten had already left Vigfusstead that morning. "We'll make an early start tomorrow," he grumbled, doing his best to stamp around and make a scene; but with such sore feet, sitting in a chair and complaining loudly was the best he could do. "We can catch my father at Hrappsrivercrossing by noon. I know he wouldn't miss a chance to stop and drink Hrapp's ale. That is, if someone will lend Brak a decent horse."
"Certainly," Vigfus said, always ready to curry favor with young fellows who happened to be the sons of wealthy and powerful chieftains. "I've got just the horse for your man; a fine strong chestnut mare I ride myself. She'll take you there, all right. Such a pity you didn't get here yesterday or earlier in the day today. Thorsten waited until midday for you. I expect it was the storm last evening that delayed you?" He looked speculatively at Pehr's bandaged feet.
"We had a slight accident," Pehr said, and quickly diverted Vigfus to the subject of the best ale in his cellar.
Brak left the talking to Pehr and the other guests in Vigfus' hall. Privately, he decided to be stubborn about keeping Faxi. The old horse refused to gallop much, but he could trot along at his steady pace long after faster horses were cross-eyed and knock-kneed with exhaustion.
Brak ate his supper without his usual appreciation of fine food, although rhubarb soup and pickled sheep's feet were two of his favorites. When he was finished, he slipped to the door without attracting attention and peered out warily at the sky, which was still light enough for him to see any Myrkriddir if there happened to be some flying around over the hall. Seeing nothing suspicious, he scuttled out to the stable to give Faxi a treat and a good scratching behind the ears, which Faxi enjoyed almost as much as it soothed Brak's anxieties. While he scratched he talked, and Faxi listened good-humoredly, shaking his head and wobbling his lips as if his night in the dark elves' tunnel had been a lark.
Still uneasy, Brak again scanned the sky for Myrkriddir and hurried back to the hall, diving in at the door of the kitchen annex because it was the closest. His mother was also the sister of Gudrun, the cook, and he was usually glad to visit Vigfusstead to exchange family gossip.
"Come in and sit yourself down, Brak," Gudrun greeted him. "You can sit by the fire and shake off those night vapors, if you'll be a decent young fellow and not fluster my girls. It's not an evening for strolls in the moonlight, if you ask me." She was vigorously punching an enormous crock of dough for breadmaking, punctuating every other word with a tremendous thump.
"Thank you, Aunt." Brak took a stool by the fire and held out his cold hands. The early spring weather was in danger of forgetting itself again and reverting to winter. "It does seem rather damp and mizzling out. And did you notice the smell? It's like a hundred moldy old cellars left open, or a barrowЧ" He muzzled himself swiftly and felt his face and ears turn bright pink when the kitchen girls all stared at him and tittered nervously.
His aunt nodded and grunted as she plopped the dough onto the table. "Aye, barrow mounds full of rotting bones and evil curses," she said with dark significance, burying her arms to the elbows in the brown mass. "I've had this feeling, as if something awful were going to happen, and it's well known that I've got a gift for seeing the future. Ever since I clapped eyes on that poor little kitchen girl who came scratching at my door early this morningЧ"
Brak's eyes flew open. "What girl?" he demanded.
"A common, scrawny girl. She came from that witch Katla, terribly abused and hungry. I gave her all she could eat and a sackful besides. She was running away, of course, but not a soul could blame her. There's something strange about that Katla, wandering in from nowhere and taking that abandoned house where the family all died; where does she get the money for the food and animals she keeps? I hope you remember the lessons your old grandmother taught you about magic and the scraelings and the secret people of Skarpsey. I hope to goodness you'll remember, as I swear it upon every stone in SkarpseyЧ" She raised one hand, sticky with webs of dough.
"No, no, I haven't forgotten a word she said," Brak assured her hastily, closing his astonished mouth. "You say the girl from Katla's was here, running away? Where was she going, did she say? Did you see the direction she took?"
Gudrun wrestled mightily with the dough. The battle was fairly even, but Gudrun overpowered her adversary, preventing it from escaping off the edges of the table. Breathing heavily, she tossed her hair out of her eyes and said, "The little creature didn't say, but I saw her walking east toward Hrappsrivercrossing. I wished her luck, but I fear she'll die out there. Lone travelers heading toward the inland often are never seen again. There are still scraelings out there, or trolls, or whatever you want to call 'em, but they're all hungry and mighty evil." Gudrun stopped her kneading suddenly and stared around, listening, with an expression on her face that froze the three kitchen girls into wide-eyed statues. "There, now, there it is again," she said in a deep, husky whisper. "Listen to that and tell me there's no evil in Skarpsey!"
The wind drummed and moaned, sounding almost like horses' hooves and strange voices calling out. The girls frantically made gestures with their hands for warding off evil. "Shouldn't have fed that girl from Katla's. Happen she put a curse on us!" one of the girls whispered.
"Didn't the girl say anything else?" Brak persisted. The wind's uneasy noises made him get up and walk back and forth.
"Nay, poor mite, and I'll never regret helping that one. I know, I've got a sense for these things." She nodded sagely, regarding Brak and the girls with a secretive smirk. Then her expression changed and she looked at Brak with narrowed eyes, frowning intently. "But what I'm most concerned about is you, Brak. I think something is following you. No, no, don't tell me about it; let me see it for myself."
She raised her eyes toward the roof, seeking the answers among the clusters of smoked mutton quarters and blankly staring sheep's heads and sausages.
"I think I'll be going." Brak stood up cautiously on his trembling legs, remembering Katla's half-demented raving about Myrkjartan's following the speckled horse to see who had been spying on him.
"Listen to that!" Gudrun interrupted her trance to exclaim as the wind gave the house a great buffet. "It's Myrkriddir, or I'm deaf and ignorant! Myrkriddir risen from their barrowsЧ"
She would have continued, but one of her spellbound audience suddenly fell into a fit of hysterics, screaming and blundering wildly around the kitchen. Gudrun and the other girls subdued her by sitting on her and muffling her shrieks with a rag.
"Bera, you'd better mend your ways," Gudrun reproved. "Vigfus' wife doesn't like screechy, flighty girls. Stop that gulping or you'll be looking for a new position."
Deeming his aunt's performance to be finished, Brak excused himself and went back to the main hall to find Pehr. The other guests, all important chieftains and their retainers, were making noise enough that they seldom heard the suspicious sounds outside. Once someone commented about the restive livestock, and everyone listened for a moment to the distant squeals of the horses in the barn and the unhappy bawling and blattering of cows and sheep.
"Must be witchcraft abroad," Vigfus said with a wink, but behind his back he was making the sign.
The guests laughed and launched a series of tales that made the hair stand up on the back of Brak's neck. He could see fright in the round eyes of some of the simpler retainers like himself. By the time the tales had reached the pinnacles of terror with recitations about barrow mounds and draugar and Myrkriddir. Brak's nerves were strung as taut as harp strings. The wind outside moaned and muttered a ghostly accompaniment to the storytellers.
Brak's restless gaze traveled around the hall, suddenly fixing on the window by the porch. A face was looking in, a lean, bony face like a corpse's, shaded by a drooping hood, and Brak could swear the eyes burned in their sockets like two coals in the ash. He gasped, choked, and couldn't speak for coughing, so he pointed frantically to the window, gripped his throat with the other hand, and turned quite purple in the face.
The other guests leaped to their feet with staring eyes, and not a few made signs to ward off evil. In a babble of voices they cried: "What is it?" "Who's there?" "It's the Myrkriddir!" "House-riders!"
"Quiet!" Vigfus roared, turning to Brak and giving him a good pounding on the back to ease his coughing. "What's the matter with you? Are you having a fit?"
Brak pointed to the door and wheezed, "Someone's out there, looking in, and he didn't lookЧalive."
"What do you mean, you dolt?" Vigfus snorted, breathing heavily and staring at the door. "How could heЧ" A heavy knock interrupted him. "Well, of course. It's only a benighted traveler getting in out of the storm. Probably going to the Thing, same as you fellows." He looked at Brak in disgust. Brak shrank away in mortification at himself.