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

black pine and found a patch of long, sweet grass to pull up for the donkey. She hadn't
named him yet; Talaysen had driven all thoughts of such trivial matters out of her head.
Infuriating man. She hadn't even been able to enjoy the feeling of freedom that
picking and choosing her own road had given her.
Once the donkey had been fed and hobbled, she made a sketchy camp in the gloom of
dusk with the economy of someone who has performed such tasks too many times to
count. She scraped dead, dry needles away from a patch of bare earth, laid a tiny fire
ready to light, rigged a tripod out of green branches over it, and hung her small kettle full
of the sweet water she had drawn at the last stream from the apex of the tripod. She took
the tent and her bedding out of one of the panniers and dropped them both nearest to the
trunk of the tree. Then she lit the fire and laid her bedding out atop the still-folded tent.
Her weather-sense gave her no hint of a storm tonight, so there was no point in putting
the tent up, and screen-mesh was not needed since this wasn't the territory for
bloodsuckers. She preferred to sleep out under the open sky when she could; she would
sprinkle certain herbs over the smoldering remains of her fire to keep biting insects away
as she slept. Sometimes the touch of the moon gave her dreams of her own, and it would
be useful for one such to come to her tonight.
The water in the kettle was soon boiling, and she poured half of it over tea leaves in
her mug. She threw a handful of meal and dried berries into what remained; porridge was
a perfectly good dinner, and she had feasted every night of the Faire. It would do her no
harm to dine frugally tonight, and there were honey-cakes to break her fast on in the
morning, an indulgence she had not been able to resist when she passed through the last
village this afternoon.
The moon rose, serene as always. Its silver light filtered through the branches of the
tree she sheltered beneath. The donkey dozed, standing hip-shot with his head hanging,
the firelight flickering over him but not waking him. Somewhere in the further distance,
an owl called.
Nightingale strained her ears for the notes of her namesake bird, but there was no
sweet, sad song wafting on the warm air tonight. It was the wrong season for a nightingale
to be singing, but she never drifted off to sleep without listening for one, no matter where
she was or what time of year it might be. Nearby crickets sang cheerfully enough that she
didn't miss the absence of that song too much.
Although it was very lonely out here....
Abruptly, a whistle joined the cricket chorus, and Nightingale sat bolt upright on her
sleeping-pad. That was no night-bird song, that was the first few bars of "Lonely Road"!
There was someone out there someone near enough to see the light of her tiny fire,
even through the masking branches!
"Might a friend come in to your fire, Bird of the Night?" asked a voice out of the
darkness. It was a clear voice, a silvery tenor, a voice of a kind that a trained musician
would recognize, although she did not recognize who the speaker was. It held that peculiar
lack of passion that only Elves projected.
An Elf? First Master Wren, and now one of the Elvenkin? The chill that had threaded
Nightingale's spine since her meeting with Master Wren deepened.
Elves did not often call themselves the "friend" of a mortal, not even a Gypsy. Though
Nightingale could boast of such a distinction if she cared to, she was very far from the hills
and halls of those few of the Elvenkin who normally called her "friend."
"Any friend is welcome to share my fire," she replied cautiously. "But an unfriend in
the guise of a friend "
" should be aware that the fierce Horned Owl is as much a bird of the night as the
Nightingale," the voice replied, with a hollow chuckle. "Your reputation as a hunter in the