"Mercedes Lackey - A Ghost of a Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

A GHOST OF A CHANCE

by Mercedes Lackey

A voice, an icy, whispering voice, came out of the darkness from all around her;
from everywhere, yet nowhere. It could have been born of her imagination, yet
Rune knew the voice was the Ghost's, and that to run was to die. Instantly, but
in terror that would make dying seem to last an eternity.
"Why have you come here, stupid child?" it murmured, as fear urged her to run
away. "Why were you waiting here? For me? Foolish child, do you not know what I
am? What I could do to you?"
Rune had to swallow twice before she could speak, and even then her voice
cracked and squeaked with fear.
"I've come to fiddle for you-sir?" she said, gasping for breath between each
word, trying to keep her teeth from chattering.
The Ghost laughed, a sound with no humor in it, the kind of laugh that called up
empty wastelands and icy peaks. "Well, then, girl. Fiddle, then. And pray to
that Sacrificed God of yours that you fiddle well, very well. If you please me,
if you continue to entertain me until dawn, I shall let you live, a favor I have
never granted any other. But I warn you-the moment my attention lags, little
girl-you'll die like all the others and you will join all the others in my own
private little Hell."


CHAPTER ONE
The attic cubicle was dark and stuffy, two conditions the tiny window under the
eaves did little to alleviate. Rune reached up to the shelf over her pallet for
her fiddle case, and froze with her hand less than an inch away. Her mother's
nasal whine echoed up the stairs from the tavern sleeping rooms below.
"Rune? Rune!"
Rune sighed, and her hand dropped to her side. "Yes, Mother?" she called over
her shoulder. She'd hoped to get a little practice in before the evening
customers began to file in.
"Have you swept the tavern and scrubbed the tables?" When Stara said "the
tavern," she meant the common room. The kitchen was not in Rune's purview. The
cook, Annie, who was also the stableman's wife, reigned supreme there, and
permitted no one within her little kingdom but herself and her aged helper,
known only as Granny.
"No, Mother," Rune called down, resignedly. "I thought Maeve-"
"Maeve's doing the rooms. Get your behind down there. The sooner you get it over
with, the sooner you can get on with that foolish scraping of yours." Then, as
an afterthought, as Rune reached the top step, "And don't call me 'Mother.' "
"Yes M-Stara." Stifling another sigh, Rune plodded down the steep, dark attic
stairs, hardly more than a ladder down the back wall. As she passed the open
doors, she heard Maeve's tuneless humming and the slow scrape of a broom coming
from the one on her right. From the bottom, she crossed the hall to the real
stairs taking them two at a time down into the common room.
The shutters on the windows on two sides of the room had been flung wide to the
brisk spring air; a light breeze slowly cleared out the last of the beer fumes.
A half-worn broom leaned against the bar at the back of the room, where Maeve