"McKillip,.Patricia.A.-.Qrmh.3.-.Harpist.In.The.Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

"You could stay here."

Her head lifted. With the sun catching in her eyes again, he could not read their expression. But her voice was stiff. "I am not going to leave you. I refused even the wealth of Hel and all the pigs hi it for your sake. You are going to have to learn to live with me."

"It's difficult enough just trying to live," he murmured, without thinking, then flushed. But her mouth twitched. He reached across to her, took her hand. 'Tor one silver boar bristle, I would take you to Hed and spend the rest of my life raising plow horses in east Hed."

"m find you a boar bristle."

"How do I marry you, in this land?"

"You can't," she said calmly, and his hand slackened.

"What?"

4 Harpist in the Wind

"Only the king has the power to bind his heirs in marriage. And my father is not here. So we'll have to forget about that until he finds the time to return home."

"But, RaederleЧ"

She pitched a sliver of mortar across the tail feathers of a passing crow, causing it to veer with a squawk. "But what?" she said darkly.

"I can't ... I can't walk into your father's land, trouble the dead as I have, nearly commit murder hi his hall, then take you away with me to wander through the realm without even marrying you. What in Hel's name will your father think of me?"

"When he finally meets you, he'll let you know. What I think, which is more to the point, is that my father has meddled enough with my life. He may have foreseen our meeting, and maybe even our loving, but I don't think he should have his own way in everything. Fm not going to marry you just because he maybe foresaw that, too, hi some dream."

"Do you think it was that, behind his strange vow about Peven's Tower?" he asked curiously. "Foreknowledge?**

"You are changing the subject.**

He eyed her a moment, considering the subject and her flushed face. "Well," he said softly, casting their future to the winds over the dizzying face of the tower, "if you refuse to marry me, I don't see what I can do about it. And if you choose to come with meЧ if that is what you really wantЧI am not going to stop you. I want you too much. But I'm terrified. I think we would have more hope of survival falling head first off this tower. And at least, doing that, we'd know where we were going."

Her hand lay on the stones between them. She lifted it, touched his face. "You have a name and a destiny. I can only believe that sooner or later you will stumble across some hope."

"I haven't seen any so far. Only you. Will you marry me in Hed?"

Harpist in the Wind

"No.*

He was silent a little, holding her eyes. "Why?"

She looked away from him quickly; he sensed a sudden, strange turmoil in her. "For many reasons."

"RaederleЧ"

"No. And don't ask me again. And stop looking at me like that."

"All right," he said after a moment. He added, "I don't remember that you were so stubborn."