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

Deep in the stones, playing among the fish, she was scarcely
aware of the coronation above her head. Master Croysus vanished
for most of a day or two, then came to her late in the morning,
reeking of smoke, his hair standing on end, to see how far she had
gotten into the mystery. He seemed pleased with her work, and less
pleased with what was going on in the complex and
incomprehensible palace above ground.
тАЬSheтАЩs very young,тАЭ he muttered of the new queen. тАЬYounger than
you, and with far less тАФ far less тАФ тАЭ
Less what he could not find a word for. Nepenthe, oblivious of
most of what went on beyond the library, assumed that the world
would take care of itself, and got on with her fish.
That night she woke with a start to the sound of her name.
She answered instantly, pulling herself upright out of a stupor of
dreams: тАЬYes.тАЭ
Then she opened her eyes, puzzled. The world was so still that it
might have vanished, swallowed by its own past or future. The
name was already fading; she could only hear the backwashed
eddies and echoes of it in her head. Outside her door, the stone
corridors were silent; no one had called Nepenthe. Neither the
drowsing embers in her brazier nor the single star hanging in the
high narrow window shed any light upon the matter. Yet someone
had dropped a word like a weight on a plumb line straight into her
heart and she had recognized her name.
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 didnтАЩt 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