"Clayton Emery - Runesword 01 - Outcasts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

time for exploring. Or reading or studying or having any fun.
It had been a long time since Elizebith had done anything
fun.

And here she had to minister to the wants and needs of the
peasants who sought out the "witch." More wants than
needs, but who was she to talk? The reason she was so clumsy
at fetching and carrying and cooking is that she'd never done
it for herself until recently. If only she'd known how happy
she was when she was happy! She had been such a little giri.
A spoiled little girl. Never wanting for anything. She would
give anything now, even her soul, just to be able to sit quietly
and not run, run,run.

Yes, the peasants had come. They wanted a cure for a
toothache. A love potion. A physic to flush a baby from the
womb. A curse fora prosperous neighbor. Elizebith did what
she could. A toothache received the inner bark of the slippery
elm. But it was only a temporary cure. A love potion was
camphor oil applied tb me hair of the loved one, accompanied
by "good thoughts." It was a nostrum. The physic to be rid
of a baby was mineral oil. The poison killed the woman as
well if she took it improperly. The curse could be anything

OUTCASTS 3

as long as it was vile: hate added the rest. But she had known
she couldn't keep it up for long. People hated witches. (It
was a mark of the peasants' ignorance that they couldn't tell
witches from magicians.) They hated what a witch could do,
even as they asked her. They welshed on payment unless you
took it beforehand. And they waited until the last minute,
and that had been Bith's undoing. While a couple had not
hesitated to make the long journey to her hut to save a cow,
they always waited until a daughter was at death's door before
lifting a finger. This time it had been too late. Bith had tried,
but the child had died within hours. The grieving parents had
blamed the witch. She should have known. Her mother had
warned her time and again that helping people always brought
punishment. But she hadn't expected it to happen so soon.
Here she was, fleeing for her life.

Bith rose and pressed through the brush, uphill. It was very
quiet up here, and there was no wind. Was the ravine closing
in? The slopes at either hand were not just grass and leaves,
but crumbly ledge. The sides were steep and not thirty feel
apart. Maybe she'd pass through this cut soon, then she could
run on the flat. Though she couldn't run much fartherтАФshe
was almost spent. A lifetime of sailing a cockleshell on a
lake and reading romances had not prepared her for a real