"Esther M. Friesner - Hallowmass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

fountain. Lichens crawled across enameled eyes, moss clothed wanton nakedness,
and still this work of a dead man's hands outshone Master Giles's finest
endeavors. He fled the place, ashamed and aching with envy.

"She was there," the boy said. "I didn't know, at first. Then I heard the music.
The words praised God, yet sounded...I cannot say how they sounded, not truly.
Can praise hold sorrow? I called out, 'Who's there?' The music stilled. All I
could hear was the snuffle and grunt of Margaret's pigs. I thought I'd
frightened the lady away."

"How could you tell she was a lady?" Master Giles asked. "She might have been a
peasant's daughter sent, like you, on an errand."

"You would not say so if you'd heard the daintiness of her song. A voice like
that never called pigs home or shooed chickens," Benedict countered. "Besides, I
caught her scent, all flowers, dewy and clean. When she returned, she gave me
reason not to doubt, proof of what I already knew."

"She returned?"

"That very day. The wood was growing cooler; it must have been near sunset. I
was whistling up my pigs--they're bright, obedient beasts or Margaret never
would have trusted them to me--when I heard her song again. This time it was a
different one, a hymn to the Virgin. I'd never heard the like. There was a year
when the pigs bred so well, Margaret allowed me to accompany her to a fair at
Saint Jerome's abbey. I heard the monks in choir and stood captured by the sound
until Margaret gave me a knock on the head to hurry me along. I thought then
that there could be nothing more beautiful in all the world than the sound of so
many voices interwoven so perfectly." A wistful look crossed his face. "I was
wrong."

There was something in his son's expression that troubled Master Giles to the
heart. Blind, his boy must keep company with fancies more than most. Some
fancies fevered the brain, bringing madness. What was all this talk of ladies
met in the wildwood? The forest was no haven for the gently bred. It welcomed
none.

The woods around this town were shrouded in dark legends, tales of the Fey with
their cold immortal beauty who begrudged men their frail immortal souls. Their
chief delight was robbery, pure and simple, snatching away the precious few
comforts mortals could claim. With their deceiving ghost-lights they robbed the
weary workman of his way home to rest when he crossed their lands by night.
Their heartless swains led maidens to believe themselves beloved, let them wake
to find themselves abandoned. Not even the innocent babe in the cradle was safe
from their malice, their schemes at once bereaving mother of child and child of
human love.

Was stealing a poor blind boy's sanity beyond them?

"My boy," said the stonecutter, trying to hold his voice as steady as he held