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

in hand, as if to offer them battle. "Begone, you soulless rabble! May the devil
claim his own!"

"May we all claim our own this day," said the foremost elvenlord, and his soft
words lilted with such melody that the bishop's promised childchoir would have
sounded like a clash of copper pans beside him.

"What do you seek here?" the bishop demanded, eyeing the elvenlord with the
narrow mind's suspicion of beauty.

"We know our quarry," came the cool reply. And the elvenlord flicked the bridle
of his mount just enough to make it resume its leisurely pace around to the
south porch of the cathedral.
The crowd did not seem to move, and yet somehow the passage of the Faerie host
drew mortals along with it the way a stream in flood will carry all manner of
oddments along in its course. Master Giles certainly did not know how he came to
be there, yet there he was, in full sight of the south porch with his son's
shoulder under his guiding hand and even Margaret's stack-o'-sticks body a
comforting presence at his side.

The elvenlord was pointing up. His slender hand made bright with diamonds, blue
and white, was pointing at the row of saints above the porch, below the rose
window.

"Give her back to us," he said, "and we will go."

They knew whom he meant, mortals and elves alike. There was no need for him to
stipulate. She stood apart from her eleven companions as a dove among jackdaws.
Her lips were parted as if her stony body were a spell that had overcome her at
her prayers, freezing on her tongue all her pleas for divine clemency, her
petitions for heaven's compassion.

Not for herself, that mercy she implored, no, much as she might require it.
There was that in her face to tell any with heart (if not eyes) to see that all
her unsaid, unsung prayers were for the outcast, the helpless, the one who does
not even know he stands in need.

"Do you know," the bishop was heard to remark, "on second glance I don't think
that's the Magdalen after all."

"She is my sister, the lady Oudhalise," said the elvenlord. "A fool, but still a
lady of the Fey. She broke her heart with hankering after your mortal talk of
heaven. There was no need for her to perish. We are immortal, when we own the
wit to enjoy immortality. Still, she died, she pined and died, fading from our
court like a frost-struck flower. She lies buried in woodland earth, poor
witling, and there let her lie. This likeness is an insult and a desecration."

"I never thought I'd stand in agreement with an elf," the bishop muttered.

"Give her back," repeated the elvenlord.