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

Harpist In The
Wind
Patricia A. McKillip
For all who waited, and especially
for STEVE DONALDSON,
who always called at the right time

for GAIL,
who reminded me of the difference
between logic and grace

and for KATHY,
who waited the longest.
 1


The Star-Bearer and Raederle of An sat on the crown
of the highest of the seven towers of Anuin. The white
stone fell endlessly away from them, down to the summer-
green slope the great house sat on. The city itself spilled
away from the slope to the sea. The sky revolved above
them, a bright, changeless blue, its expression broken
only by the occasional spiral of a hawk. Morgon had not
moved for hours. The morning sun had struck his profile
on the side of the embrasure he sat in and shifted his
shadow without his notice to the other side. He was aware
of Raederle only as some portion of the land around him,
of the light wind, and the crows sketching gleaming black
lines through the green orchards in the distance:
something peaceful and remote, whose beauty stirred
every once in a while through his thoughts.
His mind was spinning endless threads of conjecture
that snarled constantly around his ignorance. Stars,
children with faces of stone, the fiery, broken shards of a
bowl he had smashed in AstrinтАЩs hut, dead cities, a dark-
haired shape-changer, a harpist, all resolved under his
probing into answerless riddles. He gazed back at his own
life, at the history of the realm, and picked at facts like
potshards, trying to piece them together. Nothing fit;
nothing held; he was cast constantly out of his memories
into the soft summer air.
 He moved finally, stiffly as a stone deciding to move,
and slid his hands over his eyes. Flickering shapes like
ancient beasts without names winged into light behind his
eyelids. He cleared his mind again, let images drift and
flow into thought until they floundered once again on the
shoals of impossibility.
The vast blue sky broke into his vision, and the
swirling maze of streets and houses below. He could think
no longer; he leaned against his shadow. The silence