"02 - Faery Lands Forlorn 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

black swept in through the doorway, hastened across the soft rugs, and sank to
her knees; abasing herself as if Inos were a God.
"Good morning," Inos said cheerfully. "This is tomorrow, isn't it? Who are you?"
The woman raised herself to sit on her heels. She was old, her face deeply
scored, and a tiny wisp of white hair peeking from below her head covering of
snowy white. Her gnarled brown fingers glittered with gems, so she was no minor
flunky. She might be a housekeeper, except she bore no keys.
"I am Zana, may it please your Majesty." Majesty? Oh, Father!
"what are the chances of something to eat?" Inos inquired hastily. "And possibly
even some hot water?"
About once an hour for weeks and weeks, she had been promising herself a hot
bath at the earliest possible opportunity. She might have offered half her
kingdom for one, had soap and towels been included. Inos had crossed the frozen
wastes on a flood of imaginary hot water, but her wildest longings had never
come close to envisioning the long-delayed consummation of her dream as it now
appeared.
She was conducted deferentially along a corridor to a meadow-size bathroom
containing a gigantic green marble tub. A team of black-draped maidens stood
ready to assist, and before Inos could explain that she was quite capable of
attending to herself, they were applying soap and oil, scents, powders, and
ointments. Even music! Kinvale had never approached this.
Holy writ might claim that there was evil in every good, but Inos could find no
evil in that bathtub except that she was too hungry to stay in it for another
month. Robed at last in cool flowing garments of ivory silk, with her hair
encased in lace and her feet in golden sandals, she was led along bright, airy
corridors toward a promise of breakfast. Her way wound past high arched windows
offering vistas of a great city tumbling away in layers down a steep hillside.
The shiny blue bay beyond was speckled with sails. Krasnegar was a fleabite
compared to this place, and its palace a chicken coop ...
Crazy-given the choice, she would take that shabby little arctic rock pile every
time!
Then she came to a garden, enclosed by shrubbery, high walls, and an air of
secrecy. Branches overhead cast hard black shadows, dappling grass so smooth
that it must in truth be a green velvet tablecloth, and the flowers could only
be silk, or possibly enameled gold. The sky was a fierce blue, the sun deadly,
and the swiftly swooping birds were colored like nothing Inos had ever imagined.
And talking of birds ... in a grotesquely domed gazebo of fretted marble, Aunt
Kade sat like a caged dove, calmly nibbling sliced peaches.
Gold lace lay over her snowy hair, but otherwise she, too, was enveloped in
white. Inos recalled far-0ff days of helping Ido in the palace laundry, when
sometimes they had draped themselves m sheets to play at being wraiths of evil.
Then Kade looked up. Relief flashed in her faded blue eyes and she made as if to
stand.
"Don't!" Inos said hurriedly and stooped to give her a kiss. They held each
other for a moment-dear Aunt Kade, who ought not be bouncing around the world in
such sinister adventuring, who should be settling in comfortably at Kinvale,
good for another thirty years of fruitless knitting and conspiratorial
matchmaking.
"You look very ... austere," Inos said, tactfully not mentioning wraiths. "I
haven't felt like this since the masquerade ball."