"Mercedes Lackey - Bardic Voices 03 - Eagle and the Nightingales" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

The Eagle And The Nightingales
Bardic Voices 03
By Mercedes Lackey
copyright 1995




(version 2.0 minor formatting revisions)




Dedicated to
Gail Gallano,
Mother of all Tulsa wildlife rehabbers!




CHAPTER ONE
All the world comes to Kingsford Faire, the Midsummer Faire of Kings....
A Gypsy known only as Nightingale sat on a riverside rock on the edge of the Faire
grounds, with the tune of "Faire of the Kings" running through her head. Not that she
liked that particular piece of doggerel, but it did have one of those annoying tunes that
would stick in one's mind for hours or days.
A light mist hung over the Kanar River, and a meadowlark nearby added his song to
the growing chorus of birds singing from every tree and bush along the riverbank. The
morning air was still, cool, and smelled of river water with a faint addition of smoke.
Sunlight touched the pounded earth that lately had held a small city made of tents and
temporary booths, then gilded the grey stone of the Cathedral and Cloister walls behind
the area that had been home to the Kingsford Faire for the past several weeks.
Nightingale didn't particularly admire the fortress-like cloister, but examining it was
better than looking across the river. She kept her eyes purposefully averted from the
ruins of Kingsford on the opposite bank, although she was still painfully aware of the
devastation that ended only where the river itself began. There was no avoiding the fact
that Kingsford, as she had known it, was no more. That inescapable fact had lent a
heaviness to her heart that was equally inescapable.
This had been a peculiar year for the annual Kingsford Faire, with something like half
of the city of Kingsford itself in ruins and the rest heavily damaged by fire.
I am glad that I was not here, but the suffering lingers.
Perhaps other people could forget the suffering of those who had been robbed of
homes, livings and loved ones by that fire, but Nightingale couldn't, not even with the
wooden palisade surrounding the Faire and row after row of tents between her and the
wreckage on the other side of the river. The pain called out to her, even in the midst of
each brightly dawning midsummer day; it had permeated everything she did since she
had arrived and crept into her dreams at night. She would never have used the Sight
here, even if she had needed to she knew she would only see far too many unquiet
ghosts, with no means at her disposal to settle them.
She had dreams of the fire that had swept through the city last fall, although she had