"Patricia A. McKillip - The Throme of the Erril of Sherill" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

THE THROME OF THE
ERRIL OF SHERILL
Patricia A. McKillip
Illustrated by Julie Noonan

Atheneum 1973 New York
Copyright ┬й 1973 by Patricia A. McKillip
All rights reserved
Library of Congress catalog card number 73-76324
ISBN 0-689-30115-4
Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart,
Ltd.
Manufactured in the United States of America by H. Wolff, New
York
Designed by Harriett Barton
First Edition


To Kathy and Michele and Lorene



1
The Erril of Sherill wrote a Throme. It was a deep Throme, and a dark,
haunting, lovely Throme, a wild, special, sweet Throme made of the treasure of
words in his deep heart. He wrote it long ago, in another world, a vaguely
singing, boundariless land that did not exist within the kingdom of Magnus
Thrall, King of Everywhere. The King had Cnites to come and go for him, and
churttels to plant and harvest for him, but no Cnite had ever looked up into the
winking morning sky and seen Sherill, and no churttel had ever looked at the
rich clods of earth between his boots and seen the ErrilтАЩs world. Yet the Erril,
long, long ago, wrote a Throme of singular and unsurpassed beauty, somewhere
in his own land called Sherill, and the dark King of Everywhere desired that
Throme.
 The house of the King was a tall thing of great, thick stones and high towers
and tiny slits of windows that gleamed at night when the King paced his hearth
stones longing for the Throme. He had a daughter who sat with him and wept
and embroidered pictures of the green world beyond the walls, and listened to
her father think aloud to the pale sunlight or the wisps of candle-flame.
тАЬWho knows,тАЭ he would say, тАЬOh, who knows where lies the Throme, the
Throme of peace, the Throme of loveliness, the dark Throme of Sherill ? I must
have it. If I had it, the most precious of all precious things, my heart would be at
rest in its beauty, and I could stop wanting. If I had the Throme, I could wake at
mornings knowing it belonged to me, and I could be content with the simple
sunrise and the silly birds.тАЭ
The KingтАЩs Damsen would lift her hands and let them fall again into her lap.
тАЬThere is no such thing. There is no Throme. Everyone knows that.тАЭ
тАЬBah. Everyone is a fool.тАЭ
And a tear would slide down the still face of the KingтАЩs Damsen, and plop
and twinkle on her hands. Her long hair was the color of pale sunlight, and her