"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

Jill bathed and ate a sparse dinner before she got around to looking at the codex. By then, early in the
evening, the fog was coming in thick, darkening the hut and turning it chilly, too. She lit a fire in the hearth,
lit it by the simple means of invoking the Wildfolk of Fire with a snap of her fingers, then stuck a reading
candle, as long and thick as a childтАЩs arm, onto the cast-iron spike built into the lectern. Before she lit the
candle, though, she sat down on the floor by the fire to watch the salamanders playing in the flames and
to think for a while about the work she had in hand, gathering every scrap of available information about
the mysterious inscription. Although it was a pretty thing, made of dwarven silver and graved with roses,
the ring itself carried no particular magic. It might, however, be important as a clue.

She already knew much of its history. Once it had belonged to a human bard named Maddyn, who had
traveled to the western lands and given it to an elven dweomermaster as a gift. That master had in turn
given it to a mysterious race of not-truly-corporeal beings called the Guardians. She was assuming that
the Guardians had added the unintelligible inscription for the simple reason that the ring hadnтАЩt been
inscribed before theyтАЩd got hold of it, but when one of their kind returned it to the physical world by
giving it to another bard, elven this time and named Devaberiel, it carried its little riddle. As far as
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dweomermasters could tell, the Guardians perceived important omens about future possibilities as easily
as most men see the sun. Since they insisted that the inscription had some important Wyrd to fulfill, Jill
saw no reason to doubt them. Abstract terms like тАЬwhy,тАЭ however, seemed to have no meaning for them,
and there was much in the way of explanation that theyтАЩd left out of their tale.

As she always did toward evening, she found herself thinking about her old master in the dweomer and
missing him. Although Nevyn had been dead for months now, at times her grief stabbed so sharply that it
seemed heтАЩd died just the day before. If only he were here, she would think, heтАЩd unravel this wretched
puzzle fast enough! A gray gnome, a creature sheтАЩd known for years, materialized next to her and
climbed into her lap. All spindly arms and legs and long warty nose, he looked up at her with his pinched
little face twisted into a creditable imitation of human sadness.

тАЬYou miss Nevyn, too, donтАЩt you?тАЭ Jill said. тАЬWell, heтАЩs gone on now like he had to. All of us do in our
time.тАЭ

Although the gnome nodded, she doubted if he understood. In a moment he jumped off her lap, found a
copper coin wedged into a crack in the floor, and became engrossed with pulling it out. Jill wondered if
she would ever meet Nevyn again in the long cycles of death and rebirth. Only if she needed to, she
supposed, and she knew that it would be years and years before he would be reborn again, long after her
own death, no doubt, though well before her next birth. Although all souls rest in the Inner Lands
between lives, NevynтАЩs life had been so unnaturally prolonged by dweomerтАФheтАЩd lived well over four
hundred years, all toldтАФthat his corresponding interval of rest would doubtless be unusually long as well,
or so she could speculate. It was for the Lords of Wyrd to decide, not her. She told herself that often,
even as her heart ached to see him again.

Finally, in a fit of annoyance over her mood, she got up and went to the lectern to read, but the chronicle
only made her melancholy worse. SheтАЩd been trying to recall an event that had happened in one of her
own previous lives, but she could remember it only dimly, because even a great dweomermaster like her
could call to mind only the most general outlines and the occasional tiny memory picture of former lives.