"Downer, Ann - Spellkey 01-03 - The Spellkey Trilogy 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Downer Ann)

"What, are you mad? And have unholy ashes over every
farm in the county?"

"We could .. . hang her."

"No, we can't kill her at all. Any fool knows that a
witch's blood revenges itself."

"Just what are we to do, then, answer me that!"

The man with the red hair and grey eyes unfolded his
arms and lit his pipe. "Are you men not even mice enough
to bell your own cat? You needn't kill her, only render
her harmless."

"And how are we to do that?"

"Weren't you listening? I just told you."

2

THE TANNER'S
DAUGHTER'S SON

After prayers the Badger fled to his loft quarters over the
stable to savor an hour free of horses, prayers, and the
growlings of a demanding stomach.

It was a season of religious feasts, and there had been
a steady stream of pilgrims to the Abbey of Thirdmoon
See, so the Badger had spent the morning mucking out
stables, hauling water for the stable troughs, and putting
the horses to graze in the pasture above the belltower. It
was tiring work, and he had been tempted afterward to
raid the abbot's spice orchard, not just for the sport of it,
but because the abbot's oranges were an important supple-
ment to a diet of suet pudding and black bread. The abbey
had lost its last stableboy to scurvy.

But yesterday he had caught a bat in the forge chimney,
and he hurried back to feed it, his pocket full of the crick-
ets that had caused the abbot much puzzlement during
prayers.

The Badger took out a pencil and notebook from under
the mattress of his cot and began to draw the face of the
bat as it hung upside down from the top of its cage. The

boy whistled as he worked, a lively ballad, secular border-
ing on bawdy. Certainly if the abbot had heard the tune