"L. E. Modesitt - Spellsong 1 - The Soprano Sorceress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

No! Jaegal, you must emphasize the downbeats more, especially the first.
Brills hands stop the players, and his eyes flash.

Not one of the musicians looks up, although one of the horn players scowls,
his face averted from Brill. In the last part of the string section, a blackhaired
youth takes a clean gray cloth and blots his forehead quickly before replacing
the cloth and repositioning his bow.

Again! Brill demands.

As the musicians play, the ground beyond the bricks and mortar and water
appears to shiver.

The sorcerer nods. Good. Take a moment. Some water. Wipe your
foreheads. Without looking at the seven men and three women, he turns the
drafting board so that he can direct the musicians, see the drawing and the
spell, and the ground where the fort is to rise.

Brill waits. The silk awning above ripples in the hint of a breeze, and the only
sounds are soft and muted as the musicians drink and blot foreheads, necks,
and fingers.

Places, the sorcerer finally announces.

The ten players reseat themselves on their stools and take up their
instruments. The last to lift an instrument is the blackhaired young man in
the back with the viola.

Now... one... two...

Brills resonant baritone wraps around the notes the musicians play.
... cleave the ground, even, straight, and true,
More cleanly than the diggers do.
Scour the stones both smooth and flat...
The sorcerer sings; the musicians play; and a silver haze settles onto the
hilltop where the soil shifts, and the ground parts. The air stills completely,
and the awning hangs limply in the heat, and even the scents of parched
grass, dust, and horses seem to vanish.

At the end of the songspell, Brills hand slashes for silence, and the songhaze
vanishes. The silk awning flutters.

You have a few moments, the sorcerer says. He takes the spotless white
cloth from his pocket and wipes, then blots, his steaming forehead, before
lifting his irontipped staff and walking out into the full sun and toward the
sets of trenches that had appeared on the hilltop after the songhaze lifted.

The sorcerer walks the trenches, and the staff taps the lines of exposed stone,
stone remelted into the foundation pattern.