"Eisenstein, Phyllis - Born to Exile (v1.0)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eisenstein Phyllis)

To Alex,
without whose support
this book
could never have been written

1
Born to Exile
The sun of Alaric's fifteenth summer beat down on his head as he stared at the moat, the drawbridge, and the broad walls of Castle Royale. A dusty wind swirled around him, adding another layer of grime to his dark, travel-stained clothes and drying the rivulets of sweat on his face and neck. He shifted his knapsack with a shrug, and the lute that was strapped to it twanged softly.
Presently a man in light armour came out of the shack on the near side of the bridge and glared at the boy from under an enormous, beetle-browed helmet. He held a broadsword at ready. 'Identify yourself.'
Alaric swept off his peaked black cap and bowed as much as his pack permitted. 'My name is Alaric, and by trade I'm a minstrel. Having been advised by many that my songs are worthy, I come to offer them to His Majesty and, in short, to become a hanger-on at court.'
The guard grunted. 'What weapons do you carry?'
Alaric's slender fingers touched his worn leather belt. 'None but a paltry dagger, useful for carving fowl and bread. And the feather in my cap, for tickling my enemies to death.'
'Empty your pack on the ground and give me that stringed thing.'
While Alaric demonstrated that the pack held nothing but a brown cloak, a grey shirt, and four extra lute strings, the guard examined the lute. He shook it, peered into it, rapped it with his knuckles. At last, satisfied that it was nothing dangerous, he returned it to its owner and motioned for the boy to repack his knapsack.
'Gunter!' he shouted. A second man, seeming, in his identically patterned armour, to be a twin to the first, appeared from the shack.
'Take him inside to the Great Hall. He seems to be a jester, even if he says he's a minstrel. Be sparing of your wit, boy. We already have a jester.'
Alaric swung the pack over one shoulder, the lute over the other, and followed Gunter across the bridge. He did not glance back, but in his mind's eye he could see the twisting, turning road that had brought him to this place. How many miles it was, he knew not. For him, it was measured in months, beginning on that grey day in the Forest of Bedham - eight long months and tens of thousands of steps carrying him away from Dall's lonely grave. Eight months through forest and field, asking directions of peasants in hovels and of merchants shepherding their caravans of goods to market; eight months in which he was hardly even tempted to use his witch's power to speed his journey - he needed a clear and precise knowledge of the location of his destination for that, and he had none. He had walked, as normal men did, pretending to be one of them as Dall had always advised, and he had finally arrived at Castle Royale, in search of his fortune.
The minstrel and his escort passed under the portcullis and entered a large courtyard in which a dozen or so well-muscled, half-naked men were practising various forms of personal combat. Alaric's eyes roamed from swordsmen to wrestlers to boxers, and he was painfully aware of his own slight physique. Battles were not for his untrained hands. His way was to vanish, as he had vanished from beneath his father's whip.
He was seven that day, the day his mother died and his father revealed the fearful secret: that Alaric had been found on a hillside, a helpless newborn babe clothed only in blood. He was obviously a witch child, for a gory hand, raggedly severed just above the wrist, clutched his ankles in a deathlike grasp. The local peasants were frightened, and some wanted to destroy the infant that was surely a changeling or worse, but barren Mira loved him instantly and took him into her hut. Her husband grumbled sullenly under the lash of Mira's sharp tongue, but he acted the role of father, albeit distastefully, until she died. And then his strong, gnarled fingers reached for the whip.
Alaric, who had practised his power in secret, flitting imperceptibly from one tree to another in the nearby wood, backed away in terror. As the leather thong slashed toward him, he pictured a particular tree in his mind, complete to the mushrooms that ringed its trunk and clung to its bark. Suddenly, he stood in its shade and the loamy smell of the forest floor filled his nostrils. He never dared return home.
Gunter led the young minstrel toward a side door of the Palace, the largest building inside the fortress. Just before reaching it, they passed a raised wooden platform where an eight- or nine-year-old boy stood alone and unsheltered under the beating sunlight. He was naked but for a loin cloth, his head and wrists were encased in stocks, and his back was covered with raw wounds and clods of dried mud. Tears stood out in stark relief against his dirty cheeks.
'What's that?' Alaric asked his escort.
Gunter glanced back and shrugged. 'A page. He misplaced some silver.'
'I didn't take it, Master!' the boy whimpered. 'I don't know what happened to it, but I didn't take it!'
Pity welled up in Alaric, not for the boy's innocence but for his stupidity in being caught. Theft was an art a youthful vagabond knew well - theft of money, chickens, and laundry - an art that had kept him alive from the day he left home till the night he met Dall, the minstrel with the silver voice. And the silver coins. The money had been tucked under the straw pallet that served as Ball's bed at the Inn of Three Horses. It was easy for an eleven-year-old boy with slender fingers to slip them out in the middle of the night,- it was easy for an eleven-year-old boy with a witch's power to vanish to the safety of the forest. But Dall's voice was too compelling, and morning found Alaric waiting eagerly to listen again.
Dall sat in front of the hearth, strumming his twelve-stringed lute and singing lays of ancient times. When he noticed the child, however, he drew him outside. 'I'm not going to hurt you/ he said in low tones, 'so don't be afraid. If you'd like to learn a song or two, I'll be glad to teach you, but first you must give me back my silver. And then you must tell me who you are and how you came by that vanishing trick.'
'What?' the boy muttered. 'I haven't any silver.'
'You have.' The man lifted Alaric's chin with his index finger and gazed into the boy's eyes. 'I saw you enter my room last night, and I saw you leave. What is your name?'
'Alaric.'
'Tell me, Alaric.' More than his words, the tone of his voice was the key that opened the boy's lips and heart; his story poured out torrentially, beginning with the discovery of his infant self on the hillside and ending half an hour later with his most recent exploit. At that point, he dug deep in his pockets for Call's silver and returned the coins with trembling, suddenly shy fingers.
'There is no future in thisТ Dall said. 'No matter how careful you are, you have no eyes in the back of your head; someday an arrow or a knife will find you.'
'I've managed so far.'
'You've already made your first mistake. Anyone but myself would have raised the cry of witch last night. You'd be an outlaw at this moment, and no one gives shelter to an outlaw, on pain of death.'
Alaric hung his head and gnawed at his lower lip. 'I thought you were asleep.'
Dall plucked pensively at the strings of his lute. 'I saw .you sitting in the corner yesterday. You spent the whole day watching my fingers. Are you interested enough in the lute to learn to play it yourself?'
'Oh, sir, I'd like that very much!'
'Well then, I happen to need an apprentice . . . '
And after that, they travelled together.
Here I am, Dall, Alaric thought. Where you always planned to go when and if the wanderlust left you. It's all just as you said it would be, cobblestone courtyard and all. You used to tell me we'd sing for His Majesty and find our fortunes here.
Gunter stopped at a watering trough to let Alaric clean some of the dirt off his face and arms, change into his extra shirt, and stuff his ragged cap into the depths of his knapsack. Then, they entered the building that was the Palace proper.
In order to use his power, the minstrel had to be able to visualize his position and his goal, each in relation to the other. Through years of practice - some of them behind Ball's back and against his advice - he had become adept at this. Though other strangers to the Palace might have been hopelessly confused, he was not when, after many twists and branchings, their path gave into an enormous, high-ceilinged hall which was filled with voices and the clatter of dishware.
'Just in time for the midday meal,' said Gunter. 'The King will want entertainment.'
On a dais on the other side of the room sat the King - a big man, still on the near side of forty, blond and ruddy-cheeked, dressed in a gold-encrusted red tunic. He was eating a joint of meat and waving it to punctuate booming sentences. To his left sat a handsome, dark-haired, blue-clad boy, and to his right was the most beautiful girl Alaric had ever seen. She resembled the boy enough to be his sister, but where his features were boldly cut, hers were fine and delicate. Her eyes were wide and green, her nose barely turned up, and her thin lips were perfectly shaped. Her hair, which was very dark, she wore long and caught in a white lace net that allowed curling tendrils to escape its confines and nestle on her shoulders. Her green linen gown clung to a shapely breast and betrayed a narrow waist with the aid of a heavy girdle of chain.
'A minstrel, you say!' boomed the King's hearty voice. 'Sit ye down, boy, and give us a song.'
'And if it's good, we'll have you for lunch,' said the jester, a wiry, big-headed dwarf who wore the traditional motley and bells and sat at the King's feet playing jacks. 'And if it's bad, we'll have you for lunch anyway. Fee fi fo fum!' He turned a handspring and wound up on the floor in front of Alaric, looking curiously into the hole of the lute. 'Anybody in there?'
'A silver coin lived there once. Maybe he'll come back, if you put in another so he won't be lonely.'
'We'll see whether you're worth a coin after you've sung!' The King motioned to a blue-uniformed man behind him, who called for silence in the room.
Alaric's clear tenor rang out with an old, well-loved ballad.
'Upon the shore of the Northern Sea