"Chalker, Jack L - Rings 1 - Lords Of The Middle Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

as he was ever likely to go.
He hadn't been much of a lover, either. His spirit was willing, even eager, but
his flesh was, if not weak, best described as mostly limp. He couldn't stand the
idea that he could not perform in this most basic of masculine areas, especially
since he didn't have the warrior's proof of manhood by deed. He therefore
encouraged -- actually ordered and arranged -- a set of liaisons with a gentle
half-wit who tended some of the animals and socialized very little. She had kind
of liked the poor man, whose mind was very childlike but whose physical
abilities were quite mature. Her husband had, by circuitous questioning and
feigning idle curiosity, discovered that the stand-in lover's mental limits were
the result of an injury at birth and were not likely to be passed on to any
children he might sire, and that had settled it.
In the end, suspecting that her husband planned, once she had conceived, to kill
the surrogate to eliminate all chance of the affair being discovered, she had
found herself unable to go through with it no matter what the pressures. The
situation had gotten ugly, and her husband had beaten her and hauled her to the
man and then beaten her again. The kindness she'd shown the unfortunate animal
handler had been greater than the poor man had ever known, and he wasn't so
childlike that he didn't understand what was going on. He rushed to protect her,
there was a fight, and in the end her husband was dead, his skull crushed.
She had gone to the medicine man and told him everything, and he'd done his best
to cover it all up, but this was a small and closed community, and no major
scandal could be completely hidden. As usual, suspicion and rumor had gotten the
facts wrong -- although in the ways of the tribe she should have done what her
husband commanded to salvage his honor -- and it was generally believed that she
had been caught cheating on her husband and that the husband had paid the price.
She was made a social outcast, a tainted woman, and was relegated to being a
nonperson, a servant, one without property or standing.
Hawks understood well now why the medicine man had selected her for him,
although he didn't appreciate being dragged into all this. She was far too full
of life to remain a servant, far too bright to waste, but her only hope of
status was remarriage, and she had little chance of competing with all the
younger, virginal women from good families with the means to provide generous
dowries.
"You are far too gloomy," she admonished him over the stew. "You sit and brood,
and dark storm clouds gather above your head. You will not live a second time,
you know. You have let the foul spirits eat at your heart, so you do not know
what you might have had."
He stared at her in wonder. "Do you not ever feel that way? You have so much
more cause than I."
She shrugged. "Yes, of course. It lurks around me all the time and creeps in and
takes a bite of my spirit every time I forget to guard against it. Still, there
is much beauty in the world, and only one life to see it. If the sorrow crowds
out all the joy, then that is worse than death. You are less excusable than I,
for you have less cause for it."
This was getting uncomfortable. It was time for a change of subject.
"Tall Grass told me you were an artist," he said. "A good one."
She shrugged again and tried to look modest, but clearly she was pleased. "I
weave patterns, do necklaces, headbands, jewelry, that sort of thing. I have
also made some inks from the sands of the south plains and done some drawings on