"Patricia A. McKillip - In the Forests of Serre" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

тАЬI will do anything for you, but I will not do that,тАЭ he repeated, for the third
time was the charm.
She raised her lenses then, propped them on her wild hair, and looked at him
with naked eyes. In that moment, her face nearly broke his heart. He would have
melted off his horse, followed that face on his knees, but now it was too late.
тАЬThen,тАЭ she said softly, тАЬyou will have a very bad day. And when you leave
your fatherтАЩs palace at the end of it, you will not find your way back to it until
you find me.тАЭ
She dropped the lenses back on her nose, scooped the bloody mess of feather
and bone into her arms, and walked into her house. The chickens, clucking in
agitated disapproval, followed her. The door slammed shut behind them.
The house levitated suddenly. Ronan saw the powerful calves and huge,
splayed feet below it as the witch, carrying her cottage from within, began to
run. Motionless, mesmerized, he watched the little house of bone zig-zag like a
hen chasing an ant through the stark bones of trees until the silvery shadows
drew it in.
 тАЬMy lord,тАЭ someone said tremulously. He looked around to find his
entourage in chaos. She had shown the men all her faces, Ronan guessed.
Wounded warriors, white and sickened by the loathsome sight, slumped toward
servants and guards who were no longer beside them; they had already
dismounted to trail, mindless with vision, after the woman who had, for an
instant, reached into the prince to hold his own heart in her hand like a sweet,
ripe pear.
He brushed a pinfeather off his knee and managed to turn them all toward
home.
The prince was a tall, burly young man with troubled, watchful grey eyes and
long coppery hair. Scars underlined one eye, limned one jaw; a fresh wound
along his forearm was trying to seam itself together as he rode. He had gone
impulsively to war with the army his father had sent to quell a rebellion in the
southern plains of Serre. Returning bruised but victorious, they had met the
kingтАЩs messenger half-way across Serre. The message was accompanied by a
troop of guards to make sure that Ronan did not disregard it. Come home, it said
tersely. Now. Ronan was impressed with its restraint. He had not consulted his
father before he joined the army; some part of him had not intended to return.
Having failed to die, and too weary to fend for himself, he let fortune, in the
shape of the kingтАЩs guards, bring him back.
Fortune, appearing suddenly under his nose in the shape of the depraved
witch Brume, baffled him. He tried to remember childhood tales. Did her
predictions come true? Or were they only random curses that she tossed out
according to her mood, and would forget as soon as she had added the white
henтАЩs bones to her roof? His mother would know. Maye would have known. But
Maye was dead. He felt his heart swell and ache unbearably at the memory of
his young wife lying so still among rumpled, bloody linens, with their child,
impossibly tiny, the size of RonanтАЩs hand, too delicate even to take in air, a
soap-bubble child, a momentтАЩs worth of wonder and then gone, vanished like
hope. Ronan had burned his heart with them. Then he went to court death as he
had courted love, ignoring the fact that he was his fatherтАЩs only heir. The queen
had failed, even with the aide of common lore and folk witchery, to conceive
others. Ronan, understanding his father better as he got older, sympathized with
her. Who would want to bear the ogreтАЩs children?