"Kay, Guy Gavriel - Fionavar Tapestry 3 - Darkest Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

"Not so," a voice replied for her. It was Brock, loyal, steadfast Brock of Banir Tal. "Not so, people of the Paraiko." His voice was weak when he began, but grew in strength with every word. "You know who she is, and you know the nature of what she carries. We are at war, and the Warstone of Macha and Nemain summons at need. Would you value your peacefulness so highly that you granted Maugrim dominion? How long would you survive if we went away from here and were destroyed in war? Who would remember your sanctity when all of you and all of us were dead or slaves?"
"The Weaver would," Ruana replied gently.
It stopped Brock, but only for a moment. "So too would Rakoth," he said. "And you have heard his laughter, Ruana. Had the Weaver shaped your destiny to be sacrosanct and inviolate, could you have been changed by the image we have seen tonight? Could you hate the Dark as now you do? Could you have been brought into the army of Light, as now you are? Surely this is your true destiny, people of Khath Meigol. A destiny that allows you to grow when the need is great, however bitter the pain. To come forth from hiding in these caves and make one with all of us, in all the Weaver's worlds afflicted by the Dark."
He ended ringingly. There was silence again. Then: "We are undone," came a voice from the circle of the Giants.
"We have lost the bloodcurse." "And the kanior." A wailing rose up, heartrending in its grief and loss.
"Hold!" Another voice. Not Ruana. Not Brock. "People of the Paraiko," said Dalreidan, "forgive me this presumption, but I have a question to ask of you." Slowly, the wailing died away. Ruana inclined his head toward the outlaw from the Plain. "In what you did tonight," Dalreidan asked, "in the very great thing you did tonight did you not sense a farewell? In the kanior that gathered and mourned every Paraiko that ever was, could you not find a sign from the Weaver who shaped you that an ending to something had come?"
Holding her breath, clutching her burned hand, Kim waited. And then Ruana spoke.
"I did," he said, as a sigh like a wind in trees swept over the bare plateau. "I did sense that when I saw Connla come, how bright he was. The only one of us who ever stepped forward to act in the world beyond this pass, when he bound the Hunt to their long sleep, which our people called a transgression, even though Owein had asked him to do so. And then he built the Cauldron to bring his daughter back from death, which was a wrong beyond remedy and led him to his exile. When I saw him tonight, how mighty he was among our dead, I knew that a change was come."
Kim gasped, a cry of relief torn from her pain. Ruana turned to her. Carefully he rose, to tower over her in the midst of the ring. He said, "Forgive me my harshness. This will have been a grief for you, as much as for us."
She shook her head, still unable to speak. "We will come down," he said. "It is tune. We will leave this place and play a part in what is to come. But hear me," he added, "and know this for truth: we will not kill."
And with that, finally, words came to her. She too rose to her feet. "I do know it for truth," she replied, and it was the Seer of Breenin who spoke now. "I do not think you are meant to. You have changed, but not so much as that, and not all your gifts, I think, are lost."
"Not all," he echoed gravely. "Seer, where would you have us go? To Brennin? Andarien? To Eridu?"
"Eridu is no more." Faebur spoke for the first time. Ruana turned to him. "The death rain fell there for three days, until this morning. There will be no one left in any of the places of the Lion."
Watching Ruana, Kim saw something alter deep in his eyes. "I know of that rain," he said. "We all do. It is a part of our memories. It was a death rain that began the ruin of Andarien. It only fell for a few hours then. Maugrim was not so strong."
Fighting his weariness with a visible effort, he drew himself up very straight.
"Seer, this is the first role we will play. There will be plague with the rain, and no hope of return to Eridu until the dead are buried. But the plague will not harm the Paraiko. You were not wrong: we have not lost all of what the Weaver gave to us. Only the bloodcurse and the kanior, which were shaped of the peace in our hearts. We have other magics, though, and most of them are ways of dealing with death, as Connla's Cauldron was. We will go east from this place in the morning, to cleanse the raindead of Eridu, that the land may live again."
Faebur looked up at him. "Thank you," he whispered. "If any of us live through the dark of these days, it will not be forgotten." He hesitated. "If, when you come to the largest house in the Merchant's Street of Akkaize, you find lying there a lady, tall and slender, whose hair would once have gleamed the color of wheat fields in sunlight . . . her name will have been Arrian. Will you gather her gently for my sake?"
"We will," said Ruana, with infinite compassion. "And if we meet again, I will tell you where she lies."
Kim turned and walked from the circle. They parted to make way for her, and she went to the edge of the plateau and stood, her back to everyone else, gazing at the dark mountains and the stars. Her hand was blistered and painful to the touch, and her side ached from yesterday. The ring was utterly spent; it seemed to be slumbering. She needed sleep herself, she knew. There were thoughts chasing each other around in her head, and something else, not clear enough yet to be a thought, was beginning to take shape. She was wise enough not to strain for the Sight that was coming, so she had walked toward darkness to wait.
She heard voices behind her. She did not turn, but they were not far away, and she could not help but hear.
"Forgive me," Dalreidan said, and coughed nervously. "But I heard a story yesterday that the women and children of the Dalrei had been left alone in the last camp by the Latham. Is this so?"
"It is," Tabor replied. His voice sounded remote and thin, but he answered the exile with courtesy. "Every Rider on the Plain went north to Celidon. An army of the Dark was seen sweeping across Andarien three nights ago. The Aven was trying to outrace them to the Adein."
Kim had known nothing of this. She closed her eyes, trying to calculate the distance and the time, but could not. She offered an inner prayer to the night. If the Dalrei were lost, everything the rest of them did might be quite meaningless.
"The Aven!" Dalreidan exclaimed softly. "We have an Aven? Who?"
"Ivor dan Banor," Tabor said, and Kim could hear the pride. "My father." Then, after a moment, as the other remained silent, "Do you know him?"
"I knew him," said Dalreidan. "If you are his son, you must be Levon."
"Tabor. Levon is my older brother. How do you know him? What tribe are you from?"
In the silence that followed, Kim could almost hear the older man struggle with himself. But, "I am tribeless," was all he said. His footsteps receded as he walked back toward the circle of Giants.
She was not alone, Kim thought, in carrying sorrows tonight. The conversation had disturbed her, stirring up yet another nagging thread at the corner of her awareness. She turned her thoughts inward again, reaching for quiet.
"Are you all right?"
Imraith-Nimphais moved silently; Tabor's voice coming so near startled her. This time she did turn, grateful for the kindness in the question. She was painfully aware of what she had done to them. And the more so when she looked at Tabor. He was deathly pale, almost another ghost in Khath Meigol.
"I think so," she said. "And you?"
He shrugged, a boy's gesture. But he was so much more, had been forced to be so much more. She looked at the creature he rode and saw that the horn was clean again, shining softly in the night.
He followed her glance. "During the kanior," he said, wonder in his voice, "while Ruana chanted, the blood left her horn. I don't know how."
"He was absolving you," she said. "The kanior is a very great magic." She paused. "It was," she amended, as the truth hit home. She had ended it. She looked back toward the Paraiko. Those who could walk were bringing water from over the ridge-there had to be a stream or a well-to the others. Her companions were helping them. As she watched, she began, finally, to cry.
And suddenly, astonishingly, as she wept, Imraith-Nimphais lowered her beautiful head, careful of the horn, and nuzzled her gently. The gesture, so totally unexpected, opened the last floodgates of Kim's heart. She looked up at Tabor through her tears and saw him nod permission; then she threw her arms about the neck of the glorious creature she had summoned and ordered to kill, and laying her head against that of Imraith-Nimphais, she let herself weep.
No one disturbed them, no one came near. After some time, she didn't know how long, Kim stepped back. She looked up at Tabor. He smiled. "Do you know," he said, "that you cry as much as my father does?"
For the first time in days she laughed, and Ivor's son laughed with her. "I know," she gasped. "I know I do. Isn't it terrible?"
He shook his head. "Not if you can do what you did," he said quietly. As abruptly as it had surfaced, the boyishness was gone. It was Imraith-Nimphais' rider who said, "We must go. I am guarding the camps and have been too long away."
She had been stroking the silken mane. Now she stepped back, and as she did so, the Sight that had been eluding her, drifting at the edges of her mind, suddenly coalesced enough for her to see where she had to go. She looked at the Baelrath; it was dulled and powerless. She wasn't surprised. This awareness came from the Seer in her, the soul she shared with Ysanne.
She hesitated, looking up at Tabor. "I have one thing more to ask of you. Will she carry me? I have a long way to travel, and not enough time."
His glance was distanced already, but it was level and calm. "She will," he said. "You know her name. We will carry you, Seer, anywhere you must go."
It was time, then, to make her farewells. She looked over and saw that her three guides were standing together, not far away.
"Where shall we go?" Faebur asked.
"To Celidon," she answered. A number of things were coming clearer even as she stood here, and there was urgency in her. "There was a battle, and it is there that you will find the army, those who survived."
She looked at Dalreidan, who was hesitating, hanging back. "My friend," she said, in the hearing of all of them, "you said words to Faebur this morning that rang true: no one in Fionavar is an exile now. Go home, Dalreidan, and take your true name on the Plain. Tell them the Seer of Brennin sent you."
For a moment he remained frozen, resisting. Then he nodded slowly. "We will meet again?" he asked.
"I hope," she said, and stepped forward to embrace him, and then Faebur as well. She looked at Brock. "And you?" she asked.
"I will go with them," he answered. "Until my own King comes home I will serve the Aven and the High King as best I can. Will you be careful, Seer?" His voice was gruff.
She moved closer and out of habit checked the bandage she'd wrapped about his head. Then she bent and kissed him on the lips. "You too," she whispered. "My dear."