"Kay,.Guy.Gavriel.-.A.Song.For.Arbonne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

On the plateau he set his feet squarely on solid ground for the first time since leaving the mainland. The sensation was odd, as if there were a tremor in the earth beneath him. They were standing on Rian's Island, and illicitly consecrated, Blaise thought unexpectedly. None of the others seemed to have reacted, though, and a moment later he grinned with wry amusement at himself: he was from Gorhaut, in the god's name-they didn't even worship Rian in the north. This was hardly a useful time to be yielding to the superstitions that had afflicted Luth all night.
Young Giresse, without a word, handed him his boots and sword, and Thiers did the same for Hirnan. Blaise leaned against a tree to pull on the boots and buckled his sword belt again, thinking quickly. When he looked up he saw seven tense men looking at him, waiting for orders. Deliberately he smiled.
"Luth, I have decided to let you live to trouble the world a little longer yet," he said softly. "You'll guard the two boats here with Vanne. If those two down below show signs of rousing I want them rendered unconscious again. But conceal your faces if you have to go down to do it. If we are very lucky none of us will have been recognized when this is over. Do you understand?"
They seemed to. Luth looked almost comically relieved at the assignment. Vanne's expression by moonlight showed a struggle to conceal disappointment-a good sign actually, if he was sorry to be missing the next stage of their journey. But Blaise was not about to leave Luth alone now with any task, however simple. He turned away from them.
"Hirnan, I take it you can find the guest quarters once we reach the temple complex?" The red-headed coran nodded briefly. "You lead then," Blaise said. "I'm behind you, Maffour's rear guard. We go in single file. No words unless vital. Touch each other for warnings rather than speak. Understood? "
"One question: how do we find Evrard when we get there?" Maffour asked quietly. "There must be a great many dwellings in the complex."
"There are," Hirnan murmured.
Blaise had been privately worrying about the same thing. He shrugged though; his men weren't to know what was concerning him. "I'm assuming he'll have one of the larger ones. We'll head for those." He grinned suddenly. "Then Maffour can walk in and wake him with a kiss." There was a ripple of laughter. Behind him, Luth giggled loudly but controlled himself before Blaise could turn.
Blaise let the tension-easing amusement subside. He looked at Hirnan. Without another word spoken the coran turned and stepped into the forest of the holy Island of the goddess. Blaise followed and heard the others fall into line behind. He didn't look back.
It was very dark in the woods. There were sounds all around them: wind in the leaves, the chitter of small animals, the quick, unsettling flap of wings alighting from a branch above. The pines and the oak trees blocked the moon except in the occasional place where a slant of pale silver fell across their path, strangely beautiful, intensifying the blackness as soon as they had moved on. Blaise checked his blade in its scabbard. It would be close and awkward ground here if anything large chose to attack. He wondered if any of the big hunting cats made their home on Rian's Island; he had a feeling they did, which was not reassuring.
Hirnan, threading his way around roots and under branches, finally struck a rough east-west track in the wood and Blaise drew a calmer breath again. He was surprisingly conscious of where they were. Not that he had any real superstition in him, but there was something about this forest that, even more than the thought of tawncat or boar, would make him very happy when they left. In fact, that same truth applied to all of this island, he realized: the sooner they left the more pleased he would be. Just then a bird of some sort-owl or corfe almost certainly-landed with a slight, rushing sound of wings in air in the tree directly above him. Luth, Blaise thought, would have soiled his clothing. Refusing to look up, he moved on, following Hirnan's shadowy form eastward towards the temples of the goddess worshipped here in the south as a huntress and a mother, as a lover and a bride, and as a dark and final gatherer and layer-out, by moonlight, of the dead. If we're luckier than we deserve, Blaise of Gorhaut thought grimly, more unsettled than he really wanted to acknowledge, even to himself, maybe he'll be outside singing at the moon.

Which, as it happened, was exactly what Evrard of Lussan was doing. Troubadours seldom in fact sang their own songs; musical performance was seen as a lesser art than composing. It was the joglars who did the actual singing, to the music of varied instruments. But here on Rian's Island there were no joglars now, and Evrard had always found it a help when writing to hear his own words and evolving tune, even in his own thin voice. And he liked to compose at night.
They heard him as they approached the sanctuary grounds, emerging from the blackness of the forest into moonlight and a sight of distant lanterns. Drawing a breath, Blaise registered the fact that there were no walls around the guest quarters south of the temple complex, though a high wooden palisade surrounded the inner buildings where the priests and priestesses would be sleeping. There didn't appear to be any guards manning the ramparts behind those walls, or none that could be seen. Silver light fell on the temples, lending a soft white shimmer to the three domes. They didn't have to go that way. On the extreme southern edge of the goddess's compound, not far from where they stood, there was a garden. Palm trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and the scent of roses and anemones and early lavender drifted towards them. So did a voice.
Grant, bright goddess, that the words of my heart
Find favour and haven in the shrine of your love.
Yours are the seafoam and the groves in the wood
And yours ever the moonlight in the skies above ...
There was a brief, meditative pause. Then:
And yours the moonlight that falls from above ... Another ruminating silence, then again Evrard's voice:
Yours is the moonlight and the stars overhead
And the moonlit seafoam and each forest grove.
Blaise saw Hirnan glancing at him, an ironic look on his expressive face. Blaise shrugged. "Mallin wants him back," he murmured. "Don't look at me." Hirnan grinned.
Blaise stepped past the other man and, keeping to the shadowy cover at the edge of the wood, began working his way around towards the garden, where the thin voice was still essaying variants of the same sentiment. Blaise wondered if the clergy and the other guests of Rian minded having their sleep disturbed by this late-night warbling. He wondered if it happened every night. He had a suspicion, knowing Evrard of Lussan, that it might.
They reached the southern end of the wood. Only grass, silvered by moonlight, open to view from the walls, lay between them and the hedges and palms of the garden now. Blaise dropped down, remembering with an eerie, unexpected vividness as he did the last time he'd performed this kind of manoeuvre, in Portezza with Rudel, when they had killed Engarro di Faenna.
And now here he was, fetching a sulky, petulant poet for a minor baron of Arbonne so the baron's wife could kiss the man on his balding brow-and the god knew where else-and say how extremely sorry she was for chancing to scream when he assaulted her in bed.
A long way from Portezza, From Gorhaut. From the sort of doings in which a man should properly find himself engaged. The fact that Blaise loathed almost everything about Gorhaut, which was his home, and trusted at most half a dozen of the Portezzan nobility he'd met was, frankly, not relevant to this particular truth.
"Thiers and Giresse-wait here," he whispered over his shoulder to the youngest two. "We won't need six men for this. Whistle like a corfe if there's trouble coming. We'll hear you. Maffour, you've been told what speech to give. Better you than me, frankly. When we get to the garden and I give you the sign go in and try, for what it's worth. We won't be far."
He didn't wait for acknowledgements. At this point, any halfway decent men would know as well as he did what had to be done, and if there were any legitimate point to this mission in Blaise's eyes, it was that he might begin to get a sense of what these seven Arbonnais corans he was training were like.
Without looking back he began moving on elbows and knees across the damp cool grass towards the hedgebreak that marked the entrance to the garden. Evrard was still carrying on inside; something about stars now, and white-capped waves.
In his irritation with the man, with himself, with the very nature of this errand, he almost crawled, quite unprofessionally, squarely into the backside of the priestess who was standing, half-hidden, beside the closest palm to the entranceway. Blaise didn't know if she was there as a guard for the poet or as a devotee of his art. There really wasn't time to explore such nuances. A sound from the woman could kill them all.
Fortunately, she was raptly intent on the figure of the chanting poet not far away. Blaise could see Evrard sitting on a stone bench at the near end of a pool in the garden, facing away from them, communing with himself, or the still waters, or whatever poets did their communing with.
Disdaining finesse, Blaise surged to his feet, grabbed the woman from behind and covered her mouth with one hand. She sucked air to scream and he tightened his grip about her mouth and throat. They were not to kill. He disliked unnecessary death in any event. In the silence he had been trained to by the assassins of Portezza, Blaise held the struggling woman, depriving her of air until he felt her slump heavily back against him. Carefully-for this was an old trick-he relaxed his grip. There was no deception here though; the priestess lay slack in his arms. She was a large woman with an unexpectedly young face. Looking at her, Blaise doubted this one would have been a guard. He wondered how she'd got out from the compound; it was the sort of thing that might someday be useful to know. Not that he planned on coming back here in a hurry, if ever.
Laying the priestess carefully down beneath the palm tree, he motioned Maffour with a jerk of his head to go into the garden. Hirnan and Thulier came silently up and began binding the woman in the shadows.
Yours the glory, bright Rian, while we mortal men
Walk humbly in the umbra of your great light,
Seeking sweet solace in the-
"Who is there?" Evrard of Lussan called without turning, more peeved than alarmed. "You all know I must not be disturbed when I work."
"We do know that, your grace," Maffour said smoothly, coming up beside the man.
Edging closer, hidden by the bushes, Blaise winced at the unctuous flattery of the title. Evrard had no more claim to it than Maffour did, but Mallin had been explicit in his instructions to the most articulate of his corans.
"Who are you?" Evrard asked sharply, turning quickly to look at Maffour in the moonlight. Blaise moved nearer, low to the ground, trying to slip around to the other side of the bench. He had his own views on what was about to happen.
"Maffour of Baude, your grace, with a message from En Mallin himself."
"I thought I recognized you," Evrard said haughtily. "How dare you come in this fashion, disturbing my thoughts and my art?" Nothing about impiety or trespass or the affront to the goddess he was currently lauding, Blaise thought sardonically, pausing next to a small statue.
"I have nothing to say to your baron or his ill-mannered wife, and am in no mood to listen to whatever tritely phrased message they have cobbled together for me." Evrard's tone was lordly.
"I have come a long way in some peril," Maffour said placatingly, "and Mallin de Baude's message is deeply sincere and not long. Will you not honour me by hearing it, your grace?"
"Honour?" Evrard of Lussan said, his voice rising querulously. "What claim has anyone in that castle to honour of any kind? I bestowed upon them a grace they never deserved. I gave to Mallin whatever dignity he claimed-through my presence there, through my art." His words grew dangerously loud. "Whatever he was becoming in the gaze of Arbonne, of the world, he owed to me. And in return, in return for that-"
"In return for that, for no reason I can understand, he seeks your company again," Blaise said, stepping quickly forward, having heard quite a bit more than enough.
As Evrard glanced back at him wide-eyed, attempting to rise, Blaise used the haft of his dagger for the second time that night, bringing it down with carefully judged force on the balding pate of the troubadour. Maffour moved quickly to catch the man as he fell.
"I cannot begin to tell you," Blaise said fervently as Hirnan and Thulier joined them, "how much I enjoyed doing that."
Hirnan grunted. "We can guess. What took you so long?"