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

managed to make the smallest crack in the equally substantial walls of stone that held me just as surely.
But after what might have been a month as easily as a millennium (though it was to prove something
rather more than the former, if much less than the latter), real change came. I had a visitor; and for all of
me I cannot now tell you, nor could I even then, whether I was glad or sorry that she had come to me at
all.
It was on an afternoon of late winter or early spring; I know not how, but I had learned somehow to
distinguish times of day and night even in that chamber cut off from outer time, and some sense in the very
air told me it was thawing-time in the world withoutтАФthe first weeks of March, maybe, the early days of
the Wolf-moon that is full of winds and weathers unlike all other months. A significant month too, I had
the feeling, though not my own birthmonthтАФthat I knew from the runes tattooed upon my left shoulder.
According to those, I had been born in the Badger-moon, in the second month of our year, the
dying-time of the sun and its returning; so, not my birthmonth, but someone elseтАЩs, someone very dear to
me? One of the shadowy dreamfolk: the woman with love in her eyes who tried so desperately to touch
me, or that other woman, the dark-haired one whom lately I had dreamed wearing a crownтАж
Any road, the woman who so suddenly stood before me in my chamber-cell, as if she had come there
by magic (and so she must have, for no door had opened to admit her), was no woman I had ever seen
before, not even in my dreams. And yet, and yetтАж
"Do you know me?" she asked, and her voice was low and thrilling; but also full of menace, as if it
burred just below my hearing, like the nathairтАЩs evil buzz before it strikes.
I stared and stared, and shook my head. "Nay, lady," I said in all honesty, for her look compelled me,
and any road it was the truth. Or so at least I believed; it seemed that never would I have forgotten such
a one as this: She had a haunting look of that ringed woman I saw in dreams; but was not so tall, and
more rounded, with curling light-gold hair, and the most extraordinary eyes I had ever beheldтАФblue they
were, and startling, with broad black rims round the irises, almost as if she had taken a paintstick and
drawn them there. The brows and the heavy lids were painted too, as were almost every womanтАЩs in
KeltiaтАФKeltia! I had remembered the name of my world! I opened my mouth to speak the name in joy,
but some warning brushed feather-soft over my cheek, and I shut my mouth again before I could say
what I now knew I knew.
The woman stiffened a little, frowning, as if she perceived. I knew something I had not known a
moment since; her eyes fought into mine, striving for the knowledge, but I would not give it up, and after
a minute or so she released me. But she looked most ill pleased.
"You are quite certain you know me not?" she asked again. "Our paths have never crossed before
this instant?" The honey in her voice thickened, but there was poison there too. "Tell me this then: What
is your name, my master?"
At that question my bones went to water, and I sagged all over, a mannikin whose strings had been
cut; for of course I had not the faintest idea what my name was. But I was wary now; and if I had no
resources with which to defend myself, was as a naked unarmed child before a war-witch in battle
armor, still I had the one weapon of my honest ignorance. And I employed it shaking my head and
slumping down upon my couch as if in bewildered despairтАФwhich had the additional safeguarding
advantage of being my true state of mindтАФand shielding my thoughts as best I might.
It seemed effective: She appeared convinced I did not know her, nor yet even my own identity, and
to a very great degree she was certainly correct to think so. But if I did not know as yet who she was, I
surely knew now what she was; and if the knowledge feared me, I also knew, just as surely, that she and
I had indeed met before, and not for the better.
After she had gone, as abruptly as she had come, one instant there, the next gone (well, now at least I
knew for sure it was magic afoot), I stretched out upon my couch, my arms extended to either side as if
in some half-recollected ritual, and stared up at the rough-hewn rock ceiling. I was shaking a little in
reaction: What in all the seven hells had just happened here? Who was this woman? This sorceressтАФfor
that much was plain by nowтАФwhy was she keeping me here? Even my addled senses had computed by
this time that she and no other was my jailerтАж And the question above all others: Who was I to be so