"MacLeod, Ian R - Sealight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

"You need not feel ashamed -- you are no different from the others. The vanity
of man changes little with these many years. But still it puzzles me why anyone
should assume I seek male company when I have so conspicuously isolated myself
from the world."

"Isn't there . . . some kind of curse?"

"A curse? Oh yes, there is indeed a curse. I am cursed with this beauty that
will not age. But the way I choose to live my endless life, that is my own
freedom. Every few years, the far-seeing waters of that canal tell me of some
new adventurer who seeks to disturb my solitude. Usually, I simply leave the
nsia trees to deal with the problem, and I must confess, Ran Kirving, that was
my first inclination with you too. But you were obviously of a different breed
to the pampered noblemen who usually come this way. And instead of a wand or a
knife, you carried a pair of scissors! For that alone, I thought you deserved
just a little mercy."

Ran was silent. Her breath, her voice, the slight warmth that came from the
close presence of her body, had drifted further away from him again, but still
he felt light-headed.

"What did your father tell you about me?"

"That you were beautiful. I was just a child. He's dead now."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Ran, even if I envy his release."

"Envy?" Ran heard his own voice with surprise. "How can you say that? You live
here in a huge palace . . . I have to share rooms with the smell of the toilets
below and people yelling and the floor creaking . . . skidling for breakfast,
dinner . . . "

"Yes, of course. And I am glad that I allowed you to enter Totes, Ran Kirving,
if only to remind me that suffering is never unique. Desperation must lie
somewhere in your heart. If you look at it in one way, I suppose trying to see
me is a kind of suicide. Certainly, none have yet survived to tell the tale."

Ran said nothing.

"Did your father tell you nothing more about me?"

"No."

"Well, while there is still some portion of the night remaining, perhaps I might
help you to understand. It goes back at least as far as the Third Campaign,"
Lady Jolenta began. "I was born to riches, a merchant family whose wealth began
with blood and piracy generations before. It was said that my great-grandfather
gained this palace of Torea in a drunken wager over which of two turds floating
out from a sewer sluice on the Great Canal would pass under Ridotto Bridge