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

And knowing enough half-truths of us to come bringing blood.
He knelt before the great altar in the wild place and made his plea in the tongue so
few recalled. We hid among the toothed and jagged pillars, harkening, curious,
intrigued to hear our own words stumble out into the midnight air from the lips of a
mortal man. Eyes aglow we watched and listened, hungering to drink deep if only he
would make the smallest misstep, the flimsiest missaying to give himself into our
power.
Not until then, though. We are a well-ruled people.
Wizard? my sister asked, nose wrinkling with greed.
I do not think so, I replied.
He must be, she maintained, mantling her wings against the autumn chill. Blue
stars danced in her eyes. None other would have the skill or courage to find us.
Oh, I think he has courage enough. I licked a finger, still red from the sweet
blood of his offering. It was too long dead to be more than a stomach-stay. He had
not seen us dip hand and paw and wingtip into the pooled crimson in the brown
earthenware bowl before him. We choose who may see us, and how, as reward or
punishment. It was only goat's blood, but it was good enough. See? He trembles.
And you call that courage? A hero does not tremble, my sister said with scorn.
A hero does not have brains enough to know when to be afraid. The truly brave
man knows, but goes on despite his fear. My ears twitched. He spoke our language
well. Wisdom as well as courage, then. I think that this time, I will be the one, I
said, and I did not stand on further saying, but chose my shape and stepped out of
the shadows to make him mine.
I let the wings linger only long enough for him to see them and know that it was
no common cat who had walked into his firelight's weak circle to save him. He gave
a hoarse, glad cry, as one who has gambled away his soul but reaped a prize worth
the loss, and fell full-length upon the tiles.
The compact was made. It was made in the old way, the true way, with a taste of
better blood than a slaughtered goat's. Not Change blood, though; not blood spiced
by death's proximity. The blood I took bubbled up from veins still taut with life,
good for binding my life to his will, nothing more.
From that time forward, we knew each other, and what each might ask of each.
So long as he lived, his thoughts were naked to me. So long as he laid one charge
upon me that remained unfulfilled, I was in his thrall. His wants were desperate, but
modest: a little land, a mill, the means to aid his parents in their old age. The homely
shape I chose would never betray my nature or our pact.
By wisdom and by art I gained his humble prizes, and for my pay had love and
gratitude and, better than blood, the rich feast of his mind. For my folk, immortal so
long as our bodies are not entirely destroyed, the death-seasoned thoughts and
feelings of humankind are dainty fare. He gave me no blows, seldom a harsh word
from his lips all the days of our bonded life, and only a look of bewilderment and
pain when my skills could not call his young wife's breath and blood back into her
body after that third birth.
He is all I have left of her, I heard him say to the midwife as he gazed down upon
the infant in its cradle. It tore at me to see him so desolate. I vowed then to make this
last child of his a gift past common value, for the father's sweet sake. That night,
when the older boys had been taken to his sister's house and his wife lay shrouded
on the hearthside floor and the babe wailed in its cradle, for love of him I broke the
laws that bound meтАж
Who are you? He startled me, making me spring back from the cradle before I