"Flynn-ThePromiseOfGod" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flynn Michael)

"Let it wait for a moon or so. He is my son. I. . . "

"Delay too long," the priest warned, "and he may not bond with his rixler at
all." The priest's voice had gone soft and low. "Or have you forgotten what was
born within the Barrens?"

He heard Mama suck in her breath. Nealy did not understand. Only that the Pine
Barrens was a place Mama used to frighten him into good behavior. No one went
there. No one who ever came back. In two hundred years, no one had ever come
back.

"Tonight," the priest continued firmly. "Tonight you must open the need that
only his rixler may fill."

"My son," said Papa in a choked voice. "How can I?"

"How can you not?" the priest insisted.

That evening, Mama did not come to kiss him and tuck him into bed as was her
wont. Nealy waited and waited and she did not come. He was afraid that something
had happened to her and he began to cry and still she did not come.

Later, when his sobs had stilled themselves by exhaustion, he heard from his
parents' bed the sounds of others sobbing.

Stop!" Greta's voice jerked Nealy around with his mouth open and his hand half
raised. She had used the vox, what the Guyandot Skraelings called orenda. Nealy
paused with the words unspoken on his tongue. He could no more proceed than a
winterlocked stream.

Greta's eyes took in Agnes and Nealy. Took them in, saw them, understood them.
Judged them. She stared at Nealy a moment longer with eyes the color of a
storm-proud sky. Then, with barely a glance at Agnes, she turned and unfastened
her cloak of charred sheeps'-wool and hung it on the peg behind the door. Greta
was a buxom man, her breasts full and round under her laced buckskin coverslut.
Her golden-grey hair was braided in tight whorls behind each ear.

"Mistress Rixler," said Agnes, "I only -- "

"Hush, child." The voice was not loud, but it compelled. Greta bent and
unfastened her leggings, which she tossed in the comer by the door; and
exchanged her boots for moccasins. Her pendant, a brightly jeweled vestal's
dagger in a leather scabbard, dangled from her neck when she bent over.

"Nealy, dear," she said, "be a host and offer our guest some wine." Nealy hopped
to do as he was bid, grateful to be acting, grateful for having been decided.

"No, I could not." Agnes edged her way toward the door.