"Kate Forsyth - Eileanan 06 - The Fathomless Caves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forsyth Kate)

Tonight, though, Isabeau would almost welcome sharing Iseult's
joyous release. At least dreaming of Lachlan's mouth upon hers would
drive away the nightmarish visions of slimy, webbed hands, curving
yellow tusks, and long black hair streaming like seaweed, that every night
rose up from the dark well of her unconscious.

Isabeau knew why she was haunted by these dreams. Only a few
weeks ago, she had seen the bodies of drowned Fairgean rolling and
bobbing about in the waves that curled upon the beach where she stood,
their long hair undulating like kelp, their limp arms and legs swaying. The
image was scorched upon her inner eye. She tasted the ash of her horror
and revulsion upon her tongue every minute of every day.

It was not just the sight of the dead bodies that so troubled her.
Isabeau had seen death before. And these corpses had been Fairgean,
humankind's most bitter enemy. If those Fairgean warriors had seen her
and Donncan and Neil, they would have had no hesitation in gleefully
spitting them upon their tridents.

It was the manner of the sea-demons' death which tasted so foul.
The Fairgean warriors had been killed by Maya the Ensorcellor and her
six-year-old daughter, Bronwen.

Isabeau had helped bring Bronwen into the world. She had struggled
to keep the little newborn babe alive, had cared for her and fed her and
bathed her when her own mother had refused to even look at her. It was
Isabeau who had helped Bronwen take her first unsteady step, Isabeau
who had smiled and listened to her childish babbling, Isabeau who had
taught Bronwen her letters and numbers. Isabeau loved Bronwen as if
she herself had struggled and screamed to bring her, all blue and bloody,
into the world. To know Bronwen had been taught to kill sickened her to
the very depths of her being.

It had happened during their desperate flight from Margrit's
stronghold, after Isabeau had managed to outwit the sorceress by
swapping the wine in their goblets so that Margrit herself drank the
poison she had meant for Isabeau. Sorely wounded and swooning with
the sorcery sickness, Isabeau and the boys had taken refuge on a small
island in the Muir Finn. In a coincidence too strange to be mere chance,
the island proved to be the refuge of Maya the Ensorcellor, who had fled
into exile after her failed attempt to win the throne for her daughter.
Bronwen was Lachlan's young niece, the child of his dead brother
Jaspar. Named as heir and successor, Bronwen had ruled for just one
day before Lachlan had won the throne and the Lodestar for himself.

The Fairgean warriors had swum into the lagoon, seeking only to
harvest the kelp that floated in the sea about the island. Although Maya
was half Fairge herself, she was in as much danger from the warriors as
Isabeau and the boys, for she had failed her father, the Fairgean king, in
his plans to eradicate humankind once and for all. She feared the wrath