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

УMaybe it was a fish,Ф Oriel suggested grumpily.

УMaybe it was,Ф Nepenthe said, intrigued. УOr maybe some kind of a seal Ч Ф

УNepenthe! Please come with me. Your scholar can wait half a day. HeТs probably sleeping off yesterdayТs celebration anyway. HeТll never know youТre gone. Please.Ф She added cunningly as Nepenthe hesitated, УIТll let you see the book before I give it to the librarians.Ф

Nepenthe submerged herself to get the soap out of her hair. She shook her head, sending her dark hair swirling around her while she thought. Books sent to the librarians from the Floating School were extremely rare; the mages had their own ways of recognizing words. And Oriel was right about Master Croysus: he might not appear until late afternoon if he found his way down at all from the heady business of celebration.

She straightened abruptly, sent her long hair whirling back with a toss of her head, nearly smacking someone behind her. УAll right.Ф She stopped, snorting water as Oriel splashed extravagantly with relief. УMeet me,Ф she added stuffily, Уat the library stables after breakfast.Ф

In her tiny, shadowy chamber, she dressed quickly and simply for the ride in a long woolen tunic and boots. It was still early spring, and bound to be brisk on the plain. Then she went to breakfast. The refectory was so high and broad that swallows sometimes nested along the walls. There she could step beyond the arches into light; she could pace above the sea. Dawn mists were shredding above the water, tatters and plumes of purple and gray. The hilly island that was the Third Crown lay clearly visible in the distance, its white cliffs gleaming like bone in the morning sun. She filled a bowl from the huge cauldron full of inevitable boiled oats, and added nuts and dried fruit to it. She took it with her through the arched outer doors to the balcony beyond. It was made of marble from one of the southern Crowns; its fat, pillared walls and railings were high and very thick. There, if she listened hard on a fine, still day, sometimes she thought she could hear the breaking waves.

Not that morning: she only heard the voice of Master Croysus, oddly energetic at that hour. He was standing at one corner of the balcony, talking to a couple of librarians. One glance at his face told Nepenthe he had not been to bed yet. His eyes were red-rimmed and shadowed at the same time; his face was so pale it might have been km to the glacial, ravaged face of the moon.

УThey say she canТt keep a thought in her head. SheТs scarcely there, behind her eyes. Yet she is her fatherТs daughter. She has his eyes, his hair, everything. Everything but his ability to understand what will hold twelve restless Crowns under her rule.Ф He shook his wild head and scooped another spoonful of oats. УItТs disturbing.Ф

УShe has Vevay to counsel her,Ф a librarian reminded him.

УShe has the entire Floating School, but she does not seem to realize that she might need all the help she can get.Ф

Nepenthe, hovering in the doorway, took a discreet step back out of eyesight and stepped on someoneТs foot. She turned. It was only Laidley, who seemed to have been following her.

His head bobbed diffidently as she apologized. His lank, straw-pale hair hung in his eyes, which were too close together and a pallid gray. Intent on NepentheТs face, they seemed slightly crossed. He was a stoop-shouldered young man whose hair had already begun to thin, revealing the bulge of the well-filled skull beneath. He knew more languages than most of the transcriptors. Around Nepenthe he could barely find words in any of them.

But he spoke that morning as she began eating her porridge. УOriel says you are riding with her to the Floating School to bring back a manuscript the mages canТt translate.Ф

She nodded, feeling guilty about the scholar, awake and oblivious, just on the other side of the wall. УWhy? Do you want to go instead of me?Ф

He shifted, disconcerted. УI was thinking: with.Ф

УBut then I wouldnТt have to go.Ф

УBut then Ч Ф He paused. She read the rest in his eyes, in the slant of his mouth: then I wouldnТt go with you.

She swallowed oats wordlessly, then made an effort to change his expression, which seemed to be bleak, lately, whenever he looked at her. УDo you want to see the book before we give it to the librarians? They might keep it to themselves for months while they decipher it.Ф

His eyes looked crossed again, this time with avidity. УYes. Very much.Ф

УThen work near the south stairs in the library and watch for us to come back.Ф

His head bobbed again; he swallowed a word. Then he smiled, a generous and surprisingly sweet smile that made her stare. УThank you, Nepenthe.Ф

It took half the morning, it seemed, for the two transcriptors to find their way up and out of stone onto earth. They took horses from the library stables, a pair of gentle nags that could not frighten even Oriel. Once outside the palace walls, as they made their way along the cliff road to skirt the pavilions and paddocks, servants, wagons, the assorted paraphernalia of travel, Nepenthe turned to look back. The immense and complex maze of stone with its spiraling walls and towers built upon towers clung like a small mountain to the cliff, spilled halfway down it, a crust of angles, burrows, parapets between more towers, balconies and bridges thrust out of the face of the cliff, windows in the stone like a thousand watching eyes. The east gate in the outermost palace wall opened as she paused. A troop of guards or warriors in sky blue and silver rode out. Against the massive sprawl they seemed as tiny as insects. Riding away from it among the pavilions, they regained human stature. Nepenthe sent windblown hair out of her eyes and caught up with Oriel, who had turned away from the sea toward the wood.

It seemed a dark, impenetrable tangle, a smudge along one edge of DreamerТs Plain. The school, which occasionally and inexplicably floated above the trees, was nowhere to be seen that morning. Its history was as nebulous as the wood. The school was either younger or older than the royal library, or it had once been the Library, during the rule of the first King of Raine. Legend said that as the palace grew more complex through the centuries, the school broke free of it and floated away, searching for some peace and quiet in the wood. Another tale had it hidden within the wood for safekeeping during a war. Yet another said that the wood was not a wood at all, but the cumulative magic of centuries spun around the school, and that the magic itself could take any shape it chose. As far as Nepenthe knew, it generally looked like trees. But they were thick, shadowy, strange. No one hunted there. The animals, tales said, had a human turn of thought and talked too much.

As they rode toward it, the dark wood began to leak color like paint spilling between stones. Oriel pulled her horse to a halt and reached out to Nepenthe at the sight. Light shimmered from between the trees, great swaths of dazzling hues that Nepenthe only glimpsed from a distance when a parade of courtiers rode to hunt beyond the plain. Such silks they wore then, such rich golds and reds, purples and summer blues that they looked like flowers blown across the plain. As the transcriptors stared, bolts of flame and sun unrolled like rippling satin into the air above the trees, shook across the grass, and seeped away.

УIТm not going in there,Ф Oriel said flatly. Her damp fingers were icy around NepentheТs wrist.