"Mercedes Lackey - Firebird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

leagues and leagues around. He actually couldn't imagine anything bigger; his head
swam if he tried, although old tales spoke of palaces with hundreds of rooms, with
towers and domes that touched the sky. Such places were as nonsensical as stories
of banniks in the bathhouseтАФwho would live in such a palace? How could they find
their way about? How could food come from the kitchen to the hall in any kind of
edible state?
This place was enough of a barn as it was. Dozens of peasant huts could fit
inside; in the great hall, there were tables able to seat a total of fifty people at a time,
and there was even a second story, where the tsar and his wife and guards lived with
the tsar's own set of servants. This was the only dwelling Ilya had ever seen with
wooden or stone floors instead of a dirt oneтАФvery grateful to the feet in winter.
Outside, the shutters and parts of the wall were painted with brilliant decorations:
swirls of leaf and bursts of blossoms, with joyful birds like nothing ever seen in the
forest. The exposed beams were carved into fanciful shapes; animals and birds and
fish piled atop one another in a blatant disregard for the fact that fish did not ride
atop bears, nor foxes fly. Inside the building there were more carvings on every
beam, painted this time, and on the floors lay the hides of sheep and bear, and even
a carpet or two taken from Turks. Heated by tiled stoves, cooled in summer by the
breezes coming in the open windows, it was a marvel to Ilya every time he looked at
it. There were dozens of rooms, entire rooms devoted to spinning and weaving, to
drying and preparing herbs, rooms just for storing things. Each of his brothers had
his own small room, there was a chapel for the priest, rooms where the servants
slept, even a room made to catch all the thin winter sunlight so the tsarina and her
ladies could sew in comfort in the coldest and bleakest of winters. He could hardly
imagine how ordinary men had built the palace; it just seemed too big for human
hands to have made. Small wonder that serf-girls longed for the sort of promotion
that permitted them to work or even live inside it.
The hall was the largest room in the palace, and served for every kind of
gathering. It held carved wooden benches and tables enough for all the family, all of
Ivan's warriors, and a few of the most important servants. Ilya paused just inside the
door to see how the land lay before entering. The kitchen-staff was already
spreading out the plates and bowls of food, although Ivan and most of his sons had
not yet arrived. A little relieved, Ilya took a place on the bench beside Sasha, the
brother nearest his own age, and reached for a bowl of mashed turnips. Sasha
ignored him, since he was only reaching for vegetables; Sasha became annoyed only
when someone got at the meat before he had a chance to pick it over.
Dropping a bit of butter on top of the turnips, Ilya intercepted the boy carrying
the borscht and got a bowlful. Meals with the family were always like this: intercept
or grab what you wanted, or do without. There had never been any polite passing of
plates among Ivan's offspring; it was every man (and woman) for himself.
More and more of the family and household drifted in; by this time, Ilya had
bread and soup, turnips and onions, and the meat was coming around in the form of
stewed rabbit. There would probably be venison or boar in a bit; Ilya didn't care to
wait for a. heartier meat. He liked rabbit well enough, and Sasha didn't, so when the
platter passed by he stabbed a hind-quarter with his knife and carried it in triumph to
his own plate. They all ate on plates now, though when Ilya had been very young,
there had been plates only for Ivan and his tsarina. But the third wife, Ekaterina's
successor, had brought with her artisans as well as livestock, and one of them had
been a potter. There was a fine bank of clay on the property, hardly touched except
to make tiles for stoves until the skilled potter arrived, and now they all had plates to