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

But all sounds are not speech, and often it is the unarmed scout who steals from
the city gates and breaks the encircling army's hold. A sob rang out in the
bright fall air, and the sound of a man falling to his knees on stone, in his
arms the still, pale body of his son.

It seemed like such a little hurt, the blow cold Margaret dealt blind Benedict.
Yet who has the eyes capable of seeing beneath the skin? Whose sight can discern
the tracings of mortality's doorways on the smiling skull? Who among us can tell
at which of these gates of blood and bone a single knock will open a wide way
for the dark-winged angel of death?

Benedict sagged in his father's arms, the warmth fast leaving those thin limbs,
his lips still parted in a song he would never finish. Master Giles cradled him
close and let his tears water eyes now sightless forever.
At length his raw grief eased and he became aware of a slim, strong hand on his
shoulder. Reluctantly he lifted his face from his boy's stone visage and turned
to meet the gaze of the elvenlord.

"Mortal man," said the master of the Fey, holding his wondrous steed by its
golden bridle, "I do not pretend to understand your miracles. As I am soulless,
I have no need of your heaven, no fear of your hell, and all your past and
future are a single summer's day to me. I have never tried to understand your
kind any more than your kind have tried to see the world through the eyes of the
cow you drive to the slaughter, or the donkey whose back you break with burdens,
or the stray dog you kick away from the fire. And yet --" His voice, so
flawless, caught itself upon the bramble of a sob. "And yet this -- this I think
I understand."

Master Giles, voice rasped over the elvenlord's words. "What good is all your
understanding when I have lost my son?"

They gathered around him then, all the lords and ladies of Faerie, all the
masters of the Church, the people of the town. Some kissed his cheek, some only
touched his hand, some begged blessing of dead Benedict's fragile corpse, others
stared at the little body with the relic-hunter's apacious hunger, biding time
and opportunity. Those mortals who could not find a way through the press to
reach the body looked angrily about for the hand that had struck down the child.
Not because to take so small a life was horror enough; for them such losses were
a common thing, an immutable face of life's harsh rule, to be clucked over and
tidily forgotten when they raised a stick against their own younglings. No,
these good folk wanted Margaret's blood because she had robbed them of a living
saint, of fresh miracles his song might have made their due, of the chance for
their own reflected glory. A great clamor arose from the crowd, a cry of hounds.

It was a very lucky thing for Margaret that the bishop's entourage ringed her
first, or she would have been raw strands of flesh and bloody bone by the time
the mob was through with her. She stood between two men-at-arms -- shaking with
fear, weeping for her own fate -- until the stronger of the two dealt her a
backhand blow to buckle her knees and make her keep still.