"Laidlaw-Dankden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

MARC LAIDLAW

DANKDEN

He was a clumsy bard, inept at the complex fingerings that made eduldamer
strings hum so sweetly in a master musician's hands. His musical deficiency owed
much to the fact that his right hand was made entirely out of polished black
stone, carved in perfect replication of a human hand, so detailed that one could
see the slight reliefwork of veins and moles, the knolls of knuckles, even
peeling cuticles captured in the hard glossy rock. Most of the fine hairs had
snapped from the delicately rendered diamond-shaped pores, but you could feel
where they had been, like adamantine stubble. His left hand was more dexterous
than most, and his calloused fingers hammered the strings as best they could to
make up for the other hand's disability; but his rock-solid right hand was good
for nothing more than brutal strumming and whacking. He couldn't pinch a
plectrum. The soundbox was scarred and showed the signs of much abuse, the thin
wood having been patched many times over.

"It's a gargoyle affliction," he said to most who asked. "Comes and goes. I'm
looking for the treacherous slab who did it to me and disappeared before he
could undo it."

If you asked why he didn't learn to play a different instrument in the meantime,
one more suited to his handicap, the bard's face went hard and dark and stony as
his hand. "Once I was proficient enough," he'd say. "The eduldamer spoiled me
for anything else. It still suits my voice. And besides, what else could I play
one-handed? What bard accompanies himself on sticks or spoons? I can't exactly
sing while I blow ullala pipes. . . ."

He was right about his voice. Though his stone thumb grated on the strings, his
voice was strong. The conflict of these sounds -- one harsh and scarcely in
control, the other pure and deliberate -- made the bard's performances more than
merely bearable. Wherever he went, he was a curiosity. If asked why he didn't
find a musical companion, one who could play an instrument while he sang
accompaniment, the bard scoffed sadly. "I travel alone," he said. "I wouldn't
wish my ill fortune on anyone else."

One gathered that this had not always been the case.

The name of this sulking, sarcastic, stone-fingered, honey-tongued loner was
Gorlen Vizenfirth.

Gorlen stumbled into Dankden in a torrential rain, a phenomenon apparently so
common in this climate that the mud-flooded streets of the mud-colored town were
lined with patterned stepping stones of the sort usually found at stream
crossings. Hand-pull rope-and-raft ferries operated at intersections, deep in
the street canyons between the sagging, slouching shops and houses. Having spied
an inn with a lamplit marquee across the street, during his customary search of