"03 - The Northern Girl [v4.0]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

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The Northern Girl
by Elizabeth A. Lynn
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Copyright (c)1980 by Elizabeth A. Lynn


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Fantasy


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NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment.
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Other works by Elizabeth A. Lynn also availabe in e-reads editions
Watchtower
The Dancers of Arun
The Sardonyx Net
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_The author would like to thank the following people, without whose patient assistance this book would never have been finished: Jerry Jacks, Debbie Notkin, Charles N. Brown, Marta Randall, David Hartwell, Vonda N. McIntyre, and John Silbersack._
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For Sonni
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*one*
I hate you, Sorren thought at the ocean.
The summer air, heavy with salt, made her tired. The money bracelet which Arre had given her for shopping had left a red line on her arm. Behind her on the dock, the stink of fish steamed upward like smoke. Sails bobbed in the bay. An empty cart bounced by her, pulled by a weary gray mule. Flounder, she reminded herself. Flounder in four days.
She walked through the market, past vendors and shops and stalls, to the familiar slope of the hill. The ocean winked at her back, brassy as a plate. Shop banners hung limply in the windless morning. The cobbled streets were hot, but Sorren barely felt it through the tough calluses on her feet. By the time she reached the hilltop, she was plodding, and her cotton shirt stuck to her back and breasts.
She paused before the Med gate to gaze over the city. The red dome of the Tanjo shone at its heart. South the ocean seethed and glittered, speckled with the fishing fleet's yellow sails. East and west of the city lay the cotton fields. She could not see the pickers with their great sacks over their shoulders, but she knew they were there. North were the vineyards, out of which she had come seven years back. She had only gone back twice to visit, the first time to show off her new clothes, the second time for her mother's burial. She arrived too late, and said her farewells by the grave, trying to recall clearly what her mother had looked like. That had been four years ago. Now when she tried to, she could not even remember the outline of her mother's face.
The big blue building to the east, beside the river bank, was the hall of the Blue Clan. Blue banners waved before it, and from shops and stalls and carts small blue flags declared their owners to be members of the Guild in good standing. The carts that carried wine barrels from the Med vineyards to the city had blue streamers on them. Beyond the vineyards lay the Galbareth Fields, where the grain grew; beyond the grain lay the steppe -- and the mountains. Sorren closed her eyes a moment, and they loomed in her mind, hard and gray and incorruptible, the way they sometimes loomed in her dreams.
But there were no mountains near Kendra-on-the-Delta. Sorren opened her eyes. The stone from which the Tanjo was built had come from the Red Hills, through Shanan and the Asech country, a long journey, days and days away.
She turned to the gate. The gate guard was watching her from his post near the shade of the kava fruit tree.
"Good day," she said.
He grunted. His dark red shirt was damp with sweat. He had laid his spear down on the stone. She wondered what Paxe would say if she came suddenly from the Yard, and saw her guard without his spear.
"Hot," she said.
"Yes," said the guard.
The green peel of a kava fruit lay in the gutter like a piece of green cloth. All the guards ate the kava fruit when they were on gate duty, but this guard -- he was young, with a small sandy mustache -- had not yet learned to kick the peel out of sight. He was not going to open the gate for her, either. She reached to do it herself. He changed his mind and reached, too, and their fingers touched. His were sticky.
She walked through the iron gate. "Thank you," she said.
He grunted again. The guards were never sure how to treat her. She was a bondservant, but half the time Arre treated her as if she were her daughter ... and there was Paxe.
The gate closed. She strolled across the courtyard. Flowers grew along the sides of the path, drooping in the heat. As always, the pattern of the courtyard tile intrigued her. She paced along one edge of the figure. The blue triangle on the red field was uneven. She wondered if the artist who had designed the courtyard had made it so deliberately.
As she got to the front door, it opened, and a man strode out. They bounced off each other. More for balance than for courtesy, Sorren went down on one knee.
His perfume was familiar. She squinted. It was indeed Isak. It was harvest month; why was he not at the vineyards, overseeing the picking? "I'm sorry, my lord," she said.
He smiled at her. "Sorren." His soft voice always reminded her of a cat's purr. He wasn't angry, of course. Isak never grew angry. "Be more careful, child. You would not wish to topple one of our august Council members, would you?"
"No," she said.
"Of course not." Brushing his ringed hand over her head, he strolled across the courtyard to the gate. Sorren rose. Her left knee hurt, and she rubbed it. Isak spoke a moment with the gate guard; the sunlight glistened on his blue silk tunic. She wondered if he was telling the man to pick up his spear.
His muscles had felt hard as tile under the shirt. Now Arre would be in a bad mood; she was always cranky after she talked to Isak.