"Patricia A. McKillip - Song for the Basilisk" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)
harp that the land barons will want to hear in their courts, not the peasant's instrument."
"I think," Bard Galea said, looking deeply into Rook's eyes, "he has an ear for whatever he touches. Can you put words to your song,
Rook?"
"They burned," he said briefly.
Her eyes changed, became strange with thought, like birds' eyes, or the unseeing eyes of students lost in their music. "Then you
know something that's hardest to learn. Words change, here. You must make them new as if you had never spoken them before."
He looked at her, his eyes gritty, charred with sudden anguish; an ember flared out of the ashes. He plucked the single string; past
and terror receded, blocked by sound as tuneless as a wave. "I never have spoken them before," he answered, remembering the taste
of the sea on his lips, the first word forming in him as they rowed toward Luly.
Bard Trefon broke off the piece of a word in the back of his throat. He took the picochet from Rook gently and set it aside. He wore
a harp at his back like a butterfly's wing, as if it had unfolded there and never left him. His eyes consulted Bard Galea's in the way
that they had, saying things silently. She said softly, "They were right to bring him here, I think. This may be where he belongs.
Rook, do you know the story of how the first bard came to this rock?"
"No."
"The first bard in the world learned all his words new; he had no father and no mother, and no one to teach him. So he went
exploring the world, to put names to all the wonders in it. He was following the path of the sun across the sea to find the land where
it set, when an enormous whale rose out of the water and swallowed him, coracle and all. The bard began to sing in the whale's
belly, a song of such heartrending beauty that the whale could not bear to stop it. It swam toward the setting sun until finally it came
to a barren rock. The whale opened its mouth and the bard stepped out, still singing, this time to the rock. At the song, the rock
loosed its fierce clench on itself and grew hollow; letting the song carve chambers and doors and long hallways that caught wind in
them like breath and molded it into music. The whale, unable to leave the bard, fed itself to the birds and the fish, and left its
backbone for a bridge between rock and land, and its ribs for boats. One day, the bard, ever curious, walked across the whale's
McKillip, Patricia A. - Song for the Basilisk
backbone and disappeared into the hinterlands.
"A thousand years later he returned, pursued by all the magic in the hinterlands for the magical instrument he had stolen. That's the
one you played for me. The picochet."
"It depends," Bard Trefon said to a passing gull outside the window, "who tells the tale. I think he stole the harp."
Rook looked curiously at the picochet's square painted belly and the long, single string that wound around a peg above his head.
"What is magic?"
She paused. "A word. It changes things, when you know what it means. The magic in the picochet makes things grow. So the tale
goes, and so the farmers of the provinces south of the hinterlands believe."
"The picochet," Bard Trefon said, "would hardly be worth picking a quarrel with all the magic in the hinterlands."
She smiled her sea smile at him, her eyes catching light. "That's how the tale goes."
"But what is the truth of the tale?" He took the pi-cochet gently from Rook and set it aside. "Magic comes from the heart, and it's the
heart that plays the harp. Come with me, Rook. I'll show you."
Her smile left her, like light fading on the sea. "Be careful," she told them both.
Bard Trefon took him out in a boat, rowing away from the rock until they were safe from the exuberant swell and thunder of
breaking waves. Then he dropped an anchor stone over the side, baited a line, and let it drift. He took the harp out of its case and
handed it to Rook. "See what comes," he said, his dark face sparkling with brine, his eyes intent, like the seals when they rose out of
the water to watch. The boat, veering and darting around its anchor stone, nearly tossed the harp out of Rook's hands before he
struck a note. He positioned it awkwardly, plucked one tentative string after another, the haunting scale Bard Trefon had taught him.
The land beyond them dipped and rose, the flatlands to the south luminous with morning, the northern forests still receding into
shadow. In the distance, a misty blur of hills rose out of the forests, rounded like bubbles. They seemed to float above the still, dark
trees. He narrowed his eyes against the light, tried to see beyond. Bard Trefon, tugging at his line, said, "You're looking at the
hinterlands. They go north to the end of the world."
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