"Kay,.Guy.Gavriel.-.Tigana" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

The position for taking an oath.
Baerd lifted his right hand and made the same gesture. They touched fingertips together, Devin's small palm against the other man's larger, callused one.
Devin said, "If you will have me I am with you. In the name of my mother who died in that war I swear I will not break faith with you."
"Nor I with you," said Baerd. "In the name of Tigana gone." There was a rustling as Alessan sank to his knees beside them. "Devin, I should be cautioning you," he said soberly. "This is not a thing in which to move too fast. You can be one with our cause without having to break your life apart to come with us."
"He has no choice," Catriana murmured, moving nearer on the other side. "Tomasso bar Sandre will name you both to the torturers tonight or tomorrow. I'm afraid the singing career of Devin d'Asoli may be over just as it truly begins." She looked down on the three men, her eyes unreadable in the darkness.
"It is over," Devin said quietly. "It ended when I learned my name." Catriana's expression did not change; he had no idea what she was thinking.
"Very well," said Alessan. He held up his own left hand, two fingers down. Devin met it with his right. Alessan hesitated. "An oath in your mother's name is stronger for me than you could have guessed," he said.
"You knew her?"
"We both did," Baerd said quietly. "She was ten years older than us, but every adolescent boy in Tigana was a little in love with Mi-caela. And most of the grown men too, I think."
Another new name, and all the hurt that came with it. Devin's father had never spoken it. His sons had never even known their mother's name. There were more avenues to sorrow in this night than Devin could have imagined.
"We all envied and admired your father more than I can tell you," Alessan added. "Though I was pleased that an Avalle man won her in the end. I can remember when you were born, Devin. My father sent a gift to your naming day. I don't remember what it was."
"You admired my father?" Devin said, stunned.
Alessan heard that and his voice changed. "Do not judge him by what he became. You only knew him after Brandin smashed a whole generation and their world. Ending their lives or blighting their souls. Your mother was dead, Avalle fallen, Tigana gone. He had fought and survived both battles by the Deisa." Above them Catriana made a small sound.
"I never knew," Devin protested. "He never told us any of that." There was a new ache inside him. So many avenues.
"Few of the survivors spoke of those days," Baerd said.
"Neither of my parents did," said Catriana awkwardly. "They took us as far away as they could, to a fishing village here in Astibar down the coast from Ardin, and never spoke a word of any of this."
"To shield you," Alessan said gently. His palm was still touching Devin's. It was smaller than Baerd's. "A great many of the parents who managed to survive fled so that their children might have a chance at a life unmarred by the oppression and the stigma that bore down-that still bear down-upon Tigana. Or Lower Corte as we must name it now."
"They ran away," said Devin stubbornly. He felt cheated, deprived, betrayed.
Alessan shook his head. "Devin, think. Don't judge yet: think. Do you really imagine you learned that tune by chance? Your father chose not to burden you or your brothers with the danger of your heritage, but he set a stamp upon you-a tune, wordless for safety- and he sent you out into the world with something that would reveal you, unmistakably, to anyone from Tigana, but to no one else. I do not think it was chance. No more than Catriana's mother giving her daughter a ring that marked her to anyone born where she was born."
Devin glanced back. Catriana held out her hand for him to see. It was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to that, and he could make out a strange, twining shape upon the ring: a man, half human, half creature of the sea. He swallowed.
"Will you tell me of him?" he asked, turning back to Alessan. "Of my father?"
Of stolid, dour Garin, grim farmer in a wet grey land. Who had, it now appeared, come from bright Avalle of the towers in the southern highlands of Tigana and who had, in his youth, wooed and won a woman beloved of all who saw her. Who had fought and lived through two terrible battles by a river and who had-if Alessan was right in his last conjecture-very deliberately sent out into the world his one quick, imaginative child capable of finding what he seemed to have found tonight.
Who had also, Devin abruptly realized, almost certainly lied when he said he'd forgotten the words to the cradle song. It was all suddenly very hard.
"I will tell you what I know of him, and gladly," Alessan said.
"But not tonight, for Catriana is right and we must get ourselves away before dawn. Right now I will swear faith with you as Baerd has done. I accept your oath. You have mine. You are as kin to me from now until the ending of my days."
Devin turned to look up at Catriana. "Will you accept me?"
She tossed her hair. "I don't have much choice, do I?" she said carelessly. "You seem to have entangled yourself rather thoroughly here." She lowered her left hand though as she spoke, two fingers curled. Her fingers met his own with a light, cool touch.
"Be welcome," she said. "I swear I will keep faith with you, Devin di Tigana."
"And I with you. I'm sorry about this morning," Devin offered.
Her hand withdrew and her eyes flashed; even by starlight he could see it. "Oh yes," she said sardonically, "I'm sure you are. It was very clear, all along, how regrettable you found the experience!"
Alessan snorted with amusement. "Catriana, my darling," he said, "I just forbade him to mention any details of what happened. How do I enforce that if you bring them up yourself?"
Without the faintest trace of a smile Catriana said, "I am the aggrieved party here, Alessan. You don't enforce anything on me. The rules are not the same."
Baerd chuckled suddenly. "The rules," he said, "have not been the same since you joined us. Why indeed should this be any differ-ent?"
Catriana tossed her head again but did not deign to reply.
The three men stood up. Devin flexed his knees to relieve the stiffness of sitting so long in one position.
"Ferraut or Tregea?" Baerd asked. "Which border?"
"Ferraut," Alessan said. "They'll have me placed as Tregean as soon as Tomasso talks-poor man. If I'd been thinking clearly I would have shot him as they rode by."
"Oh, very clear thinking, that," Baerd retorted. "With twenty soldiers surrounding him. You would have had us all in chains in Astibar by now."
"You would have deflected my arrow," Alessan said wryly.
"Is there a chance he won't speak?" Devin interjected awkwardly. "I'm thinking about Menico, you see. If I'm named . . ."
Alessan shook his head. "Everyone talks under torture," he said soberly. "Especially if sorcery is involved. I'm thinking about Menico too, but there isn't anything we can do about it, Devin. It is one of the realities of the life we live. There are people put at risk by almost everything we do. I wish," he added, "that I knew what had happened in that lodge."
"You wanted to check it," Catriana reminded him. "Can we afford the time?"
"I did, and yes, I think we can," said Alessan crisply. "There remains a piece missing in all of this. I still don't know how Sandre d'Astibar could have expected me to be the-"
He stopped there. Except for the drone of the cicadas and the rustling leaves it was very quiet in the woods. The trialla had gone. Alessan abruptly raised one hand and pushed it roughly through his hair. He shook his head.
"Do you know," he said to Baerd, in what was almost a conversational tone, "how much of a fool I can be at times? It was in the palm of my hand all along!" His voice changed. "Come on-and pray we are not too late!"
The fires had both died down in the Sandreni lodge. Only the stars shone above the clearing in the woods. The cluster of Eanna's Diadem was well over west, following the moons. A nightingale was singing, as if in answer to the trialla of before, as the four of them approached. In the doorway Alessan hesitated for a moment then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture Devin already recognized. Then he pushed open the door and walked through.
By the red glow of the embers they looked-with eyes accustomed by now to darkness-on the carnage within.
The coffin still rested on its trestles, although splintered and knocked awry. Around it though, lay dead men who had been alive when they left this room. The two younger Sandreni. Nievole, a quiver of arrows in his throat and chest. The body of Scalvaia d'Astibar.
Then Devin made out Scalvaia's severed head in a black puddle of blood a terrible distance away and he fought to control the lurch of sickness in his gorge.
"Oh, Morian," Alessan whispered. "Oh, Lady of the Dead, be gentle to them in your Halls. They died dreaming of freedom and before their time."