"Alphabet Of Thorn" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

She dropped back down, still listening, hearing only her slowing heartbeat. Nothing spoke again out of the dark. A visiting mage from the Floating School, she decided finally, celebrating the coronation too heartily, had flung a word carelessly into the night, heedless of where it landed. She closed her eyes, burrowed toward sleep, and reached the memory on the borders of dream, the one thing that she could claim as her own, that she had in her possession before the librarians found her.

The memory was of a face, misty, ill-defined. It seemed to shape itself out of the sky, displacing the blue, flowing endlessly above green, racing far into the distance to meet it. She didnТt know the names for colors then, nor could she name the force that blew across the green so that it roared and glittered and seemed to stream wildly away from her. The face came close, as close to her as her own face, tried to meld itself with her bones, her eyes. Then she was falling slowly, the face growing farther and farther away from her. She felt the distance between them like something physical, a coldness that refused to end. A word came wailing out of her then, but what it meant had vanished into the blue.

And after that, everything was gone.

She woke to another reverberating sound: the enormous gong in the refectory. Confused, remembering the strange word in the middle of the night, she moved too abruptly and fell out of bed. She untangled herself, muttering, pulled on a patched linen shift, and stumbled down the hall to the baths. There, in that steamy warmth, she closed her eyes again and let herself fall into a chorus of laughter and protest, flat and stiff as a tome into a tank, causing a wave at both ends that submerged more than one floating head.

Someone spread a hand on her head and dunked her again as she surfaced. УNepenthe!Ф she heard as she sputtered soap bubbles. УMust you fling yourself into the water like a whale falling out of the sky?Ф

УItТs the only way I could wake up this morning,Ф she answered. Her eyes were finally open. She floated a little, trying to remember when she had begun to comprehend that her mother must have done just that: flung herself like a strange fish off the edge of the world into a sea so far below that until she was halfway there, she would not have heard the waves break against the cliff.

But why? she wondered, as always when she had fallen asleep in the realm of memory.

She felt water weltering around her. A head appeared, slick and white as a shell. It was Oriel, whom the librarians had acquired shortly after Nepenthe. She had been discovered by a scholar on the track of some obscure detail, surrounded by books in a forgotten chamber and bawling furiously. Fine-boned and comely, she could well have been the embarrassing afterthought of a highborn lady-in-waiting in the court above. Her pale hair, which she kept short with a nib sharpener, floated around her face like a peonyТs petals. Her fingers, pale as well, and impossibly delicate, closed with unexpected strength on NepentheТs wrist.

УYou have to come with me.Ф

УItТs amazing,Ф Nepenthe marveled, Уhow your hands can feel like theyТre sweating even in bath water.Ф

УThey always sweat when IТm frightened.Ф

Nepenthe peered at her, wondering if it was important. Everything agitated Oriel. УWhatТs the matter?Ф A coming storm, she guessed; the phase of the moon; a translation about to be reviewed by the head of librarians. But she was thrice wrong.

УI have to get a book from the Floating School. I donТt want to go alone; that place terrifies me. Come with me.Ф

Nepenthe ran soap through her hair, tempted by the prospect: a ride across the plain through the brilliant pavilions, into the mysterious wood in which anything was said to happen. Then she wondered: what book?

УWhy canТt they bring it here?Ф

УEveryone is here,Ф Oriel said vaguely, Уand the students are involved in some magic or another. A trader brought a book to the mages that they canТt read. The trader told them he thought it might be magic since no one he had ever met could read it. A mage told the librarians last night, and now they canТt wait to see it and I must go and fetch it because everyone else is working or celebrating Ч Ф

УI am, too,Ф Nepenthe remembered. УWorking, for a visiting scholar.Ф

Oriel gazed at her despairingly. УIs it important?Ф

УWell, he thinks it is.Ф

УWhat is it?Ф

УIt seems to be turning into a supply list.Ф

УA supply list!Ф

УFor a caravan of traders about to cross Ч Ф

УNot an epic,Ф Oriel interrupted pointedly. УYou can finish that with your eyes closed.Ф

УItТs thousands of years old! And written upon the hide of an animal unknown anywhere in the Twelve Crowns.Ф