"Ed Greenwood - Spellfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

With some surprise, she saw that there were no more dishes. In her anger she
had washed and scrubbed like a madcap, and now she was done, and it was early
yet. Time enough to change to her plain gown and peek into the taproom before
cutting the herbs. Before Korvan could come in and give her extra work to do,
Shandril vanished, her bare feet dancing lightly over the narrow loft stairs
to her trunk.
She washed her face and hands in the basin of cool water she'd left for
Lureene, another young woman who waited on the tables and shared the
sleeping-loft with Shandril, except on nights when she had a man and Shandril
was banished to the cellar for her own safety. She changed her clothing and
crept quickly downstairs again along the passage to the deserted taproom.
Gorstag would be seeing to the food, she knew, and he would have started the
evening fire already. A party of adventurers had come in from Cor-myr earlier,
and Gorstag would be busy. The flagstones were cool under her feet.
The taproom was warm and smoky. Light blazed up from the crackling hearth and
the several sputtering torches mounted on the walls and hooded with grim black
iron. Shadows leaped on the walls and the great beams that ran low overhead
the length of the taproom, bearing the sleeping chambers of the inn's upper
stories upon their mighty backs. In the shifting play of light, the scenes on
faded, flaking paintings seemed to live and move. The high deeds of heroes of
the dales were remembered there, and the glories of battles long past. Massive
tables of dark oak planks with squat, thick-carved legs crowded the room, and
about them were plain, smooth benches and stout chairs covered in
SPELLFIHE
worn leather.
Over the bar hung a two-handed broadaxe, old but proud, well-oiled, and kept
sharp. Gorstag had borne it in far-off lands in days long gone and adventures
he would not speak of. When there was trouble, Shandril remembered, he could
still toss it from hand to hand like a dagger and whirl it about as though it
weighed nothing. Whenever Shandril asked him about his adventures, the old
innkeeper only laughed and shook his head. But often in the mornings, when
Shandril crept down the stairs to start the kitchen fires, she would stop and
look at the axe and imagine it in Gorstag's hands on sun-drenched battlefields
far away, or amid icy rock crags where trolls lurked, or in dark caverns where
unseen horrors dwelt. It had been places, that axe.
The bar itself was surrounded by a small, gleaming forest of bottles of all
sizes and hues, kept carefully dusted by Gorstag. Some came from lands very
far away, and others from Highmoon, not half a mile off. Below these were the
casks, gray with age, which the men filled from smaller traveling kegs at the
upper bungs, kept sealed with wax and emptied by means of brass taps. Gorstag
was very proud of those taps, since they had come all the way from fabled
Water-deep.
Above the bottles, just over the axe, there was a silver crescent moon, tilted
to the left just as it was on the creaking signboard outside the front door:
The Rising Moon itself. Long ago, a traveling wizard had cast a spell on the
silver crescent, and it never tarnished. The house was a good inn, plain but
cozy, its host well respected, even generous, and Highmoon was a beautiful
place.
But to Shandril, it seemed more and more to be a prison. Every day she walked
the same boards and did the same things. Only the people changed. The