"Robin McKinley - A Knot in the Grain" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

often than I have lain in a bed under a roof for many years past.
Lily frowned a moment and said, No-o, we have no inn; Rhungill is very small. But there is a
spare roomтАФit is JolinтАЩs house, but I live there tooтАФwe often put people up, who are passing
through and need a place to stay. The villagers often send us folk. And because she was not
accustomed to mindspeech, he heard her say to herself what she did not mean for him to hear: Let him
stay a little longer.
And so he was less surprised when he heard himself an-swer: I would be pleased to spend the
night at your healerтАЩs house.
A smile, such as had never before been there, bloomed on LilyтАЩs face; her thoughts tumbled over one
another and politely he did not listen, or let her know that he might have. She let her patient horse go on
again, and the strangerтАЩs horse walked beside.
They did not speak. Lily found that there were so many things she would like to say, to ask, that they
overwhelmed her; and then a terrible shyness closed over her, for fear that she would offend the stranger
with her eagerness, with the rush of pent-up longing for the particulars of conversation. He held his
silence as well, but his reasons stretched back over many wandering years, although once or twice he did
look in secret at the bright young face beside him, and again there was the odd, uncomfortable spasm
beneath his breast-bone.
They rode over the hill and took a narrow, well-worn way off the highway. It wound into a deep
cutting, and golden grasses waved above their heads at either side. Then the way rose, or the sides fell
away, and the stranger looked around him at pastureland with sheep and cows grazing earnestly and
solemnly across it, and then at empty meadows; and then there was a small stand of birch and ash and
willow, and a small thatched house with a strictly tended herb garden around it, laid out in a maze of
squares and circles and borders and low hedges. Lily swung off her small gelding at the edge of the
garden and whistled: a high thin cry that told Jolin she had brought a visitor.
Jolin emerged from the house smiling. Her hair, mostly grey now, with lights of chestnut brown, was
in a braid; and tucked into the first twist of the hair at the nape of her neck was a spray of yellow and
white flowers. They were almost a halo, nearly a collar.
тАЬLady,тАЭ said the stranger, and dismounted.
This is Jolin, Lily said to him. And youтАФshe stopped, con-fused, shy again.
тАЬJolin,тАЭ said the stranger, but Jolin did not think it odd that he knew her name, for often the villagers
sent visitors on with Lily when they saw her riding by, having supplied both their names first. тАЬI am called
Sahath.тАЭ
Lily moved restlessly; there was no birdcall available to her for this eventuality. She began the one for
talk, and broke off. Jolin glanced at her, aware that something was troubling her.
Sahath, said Lily, tell JolinтАФand her thought paused, be-cause she could not decide, even to
herself, what the proper words for it were.
But Jolin was looking at their guest more closely, and a tiny frown appeared between her eyes.
Sahath said silently to Lily, She guesses.
Lily looked up at him; standing side by side, he was nearly a head taller than she. SheтАФ?
Jolin had spent several years traveling in her youth, travel-ling far from her native village and even far
from her own country; and on her travels she had learned more of the world than most of the other
inhabitants of Rhungill, for they were born and bred to live their lives on their small land-plots, and any
sign of wanderlust was firmly suppressed. Jolin, as a healer and so a little unusual, was permitted wider
leeway than any of the rest of RhungillтАЩs daughters; but her worldly knowledge was something she rarely
admitted and still more rarely demonstrated. But one of the things she had learned as she and her mother
drifted from town to town, dosing children and heifers, binding the broken limbs of men and pet cats, was
to read the mage-mark.
тАЬSir,тАЭ she said now, тАЬwhat is one such as you doing in our quiet and insignificant part of the world?тАЭ
Her voice was polite but not cordial, for mages, while necessary for some work beyond the reach of
ordinary mortals, often brought with them trouble as well; and an unbidden mage was almost certainly