"George R. R. Martin - Ice and Fire 2 - A Clash of Kings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)It is ill to keep a lady waiting." He waved a hand, a feeble gesture of haste
from a man no longer capable of hastening. His flesh was wrinkled and spotted, the skin so papery thin that he could see the web of veins and the shape of bones beneath. And how they trembled, these hands of his that had once been so sure and deft . . . When Pylos returned the girl came with him, shy as ever. Behind her, shuffling and hopping in that queer sideways walk of his, came her fool. On his head was a mock helm fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells. With his every lurching step, the bells rang, each with a different voice, clang-a-dang bong-dong ring-a- ling clong clong clong. "Who comes to see us so early, Pylos?" Cressen said. "It's me and Patches, Maester." Guileless blue eyes blinked at him. Hers was not a pretty face, alas. The child had her lord father's square jut of jaw and her mother's unfortunate ears, along with a disfigurement all her own, the legacy of the bout of greyscale that had almost claimed her in the crib. Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch. "Pylos said we might see the white raven." "Indeed you may," Cressen answered. As if he would ever deny her. She had been denied too often in her time. Her name was Shireen. She would be ten on her next name day, and she was the saddest child that Maester Cressen had ever known. Her sadness is my shame, the old man thought, another mark of my failure. "Maester Pylos, do me a kindness and bring the bird down from the rookery for the Lady Shireen." twenty, yet solemn as a man of sixty. If only he had more humor, more life in him; that was what was needed here. Grim places needed lightening, not solemnity, and Dragonstone was grim beyond a doubt, a lonely citadel in the wet waste surrounded by storm and salt, with the smoking shadow of the mountain at its back. A maester must go where he is sent, so Cressen had come here with his lord some twelve years past, and he had served, and served well. Yet he had never loved Dragonstone, nor ever felt truly at home here. Of late, when he woke from restless dreams in which the red woman figured disturbingly, he often did not know where he was. The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos climb the steep iron steps to the rookery. His bells rang with the motion. "Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers," he said, clang-a-langing. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh." Even for a fool, Patchface was a sorry thing. Perhaps once he could evoke gales of laughter with a quip, but the sea had taken that power from him, along with half his wits and all his memory. He was soft and obese, subject to twitches and trembles, incoherent as often as not. The girl was the only one who laughed at him now, the only one who cared if he lived or died. An ugly little girl and a sad fool, and maester makes three . . . now there is a tale to make men weep. "Sit with me, child." Cressen beckoned her closer. "This is early to come calling, scarce past dawn. You should be snug in your bed." "I had bad dreams," Shireen told him. "About the dragons. They were coming to eat me." |
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