"Patricia Kennealy Morrison - The Hedge of Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kennealy Patricia)

boresome, for teller and hearer alike. One cannot harp forever on the same string for those who through
no fault of their own have come late to the story, but that is after all why ballads are constructed as they
are and I pray earlier comers be patient with them and with meтАж
If you have attended, then, to the previous of these chronicles, you will of your grace recall how it
stands with us in tale-time: how Arthur the young came up from the Caer-in-Arvon to challenge Edeyrn
the Marbh-draoi, and I came with him from the first; how he triumphed, and restored his uncle Uthyr
Pendreic to the High Kingship so long usurped; how he wed his cousin the Princess Gweniver, to share
with her the Ard-tiarnas of Keltia, she as Ard-rian, he as Ard-righ, and though they were wedded they
were not truemates, not yet anyway; how we his Companions went with him on all his roads, following
him into legend; how he loved Majanah, queen of the Yamazai, before he came to love his own wife, and
had by her that Donah who now is AojunтАЩs queen (and some there were who even then believed that she
was not his firstborn, but that he had gotten a son by his first wife, the loathly Gwenwynbar, who now is
slain, and rightly too); how the sacred Cup of the Treasures, called by us the Graal, was stolen, or at the
least was sore assaulted, by ArthurтАЩs halfsister the Princess Marguessan, my own wifeтАЩs twin; and how
the High Sidhe-folk did charge me with the carrying of these terrible tidings to Artos and to Gwen, so
that quest might be made to restore the CupтАж
Ah, I make but a bad hand of it, now as then. If it is hard to be a legend, as Arthur himself learned to
his sorrow and wrath and utter cost, harder still is it to correctly tell of oneтАФin especial when that legend
you would tell of is to you not just a legend but also a man you love above all other souls.
My mother, who was as I have said of Earth, had a saying in her journals that I now know came from
her homeworld, and it is this: that the pen can be mightier than the sword. And I have always wondered:
Whose pen? Whose sword? Whose the hand on both or either?
But you shall hear all now, of swords and pens alike full measure, to the endтАФor what shall pass for
ending. And I pray you as all bards pray all hearers, disremember not of the telling, nor of the taleтАЩs poor
teller, nor of the great love and loss that live in tale and teller both.
For remembering is all that we can hope for at the last.
BOOK ONE:
Dochtrai

Chapter One
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Darkness a long time, or so at least it seemed. Then it seemed also, I awakened; or my body
awakened, if not just yet my mind. I had no memory of how I had come to this place in which I found
myself awake, or of my own past, or of this placeтАЩs name, my own name. Even so, I could not think of
any state or place or space that seemed to me better, or even other. I was comfortable, very; I was
alone, right enough, but nor could I recall the names or faces or voices of any whom I would have wished
beside me in my isolate condition. I might have been a prisonerтАФI guessed I probably wasтАФbut I was
not sure even of that.
 I was by no means ill-treated, nor even ill-kept. Food, good and hot and plentiful, if simple, arrived at
amply satisfactory intervals left by an unseen hand while I slept (or, to be accurate, while I was
unconscious); clear clean watersprings, cold and hot, bubbled out of two stone founts in one corner of
the stone-walled chamber in which I was resident. I had an easeful, well-furnished sleeping couch;
comfortable raiment laundered fresh in regular rotation, and thoughtfully supplemented by warmer or
cooler garments when the season warranted; even my own harp, Frame of Harmony that had
accompanied me through so much down the years. Yet for days, or maybe years, I could not recall even
so much as this; could not call to mind, even, how to play my harpтАФfar less how came I here in the first
place. You will think it strange; and you are so right to think it.
But, as I say, I was not unhappy; not even much distressed. It was as if I slept waking, undemanding,
undemanded of, and was dreamless and thought-bereft withal. After a while, though, bit by bit through no
action of mine, my state began to change, and I began to begin to rememberтАж