"Andre Norton - Merlin's Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

He was all light, clothed with radiance and warmth. She reached him and that warmth and light encased them both in a private place which was theirs alone. No one else in the world might ever find or share it. She was a part of him and he was a part of her, and so they became one in a way Brigitta could find no words to explain.

The world about them was golden, and it sang as if all the true-toned birds in the woodlands raised their sweetest notes at once to blend. She was lost in the warmth, the song and in him until there was no Brigitta left, only another one who was fulfilled as 'a field sown with grain is fulfilled, ready to bring forth an abundant harvest.

In the clan house Lugaid edged back into the shadows. His body swayed slightly to right and left; his features were mask-like, without expression. He might have been concentrating with his whole being on something he heard, or sensed or imagined. But with - that concentration was a growing bewilderment. It was as if a man who each day passed some long-ruined temple of a faceless, forgotten god, suddenly heard from within that desolate sanctuary a summons to a worship old beyond the memory of any man.

Then bewilderment became exultation. The mask of Lugaid's face broke and he was like one who, after years of aridity from serving a lost cause, had been proved the victor in truth. His hands folded over the spiral on his breast, he whispered words in a tongue not of the tower town which held him, nor of the Roman state which had been torn into nothing, but a language far older than either. La these latter days the words were largely meaningless even to those very few who still learned them as part of a discredited ancient belief.

Above, Brigitta smiled, crooned, stretched her arms to embrace him who stood in her dreams. And over the chief's hold the flying thing began a slow downward flight. Swooping through the roof opening, it unerringly found the inner door of the chamber in which the girl lay.

Within the cave the installations hummed to a high pitch and then began to sink again, almost drowsily, as though some beast had used its powers to the uttermost and must now rest to recoup its strength. But in that other distant crag there was no ceasing of outward flow. The beam signal strengthened, searched out farther and farther, a finger crooking into space to draw down aid in the old, old war.

Lugaid's eyes were open, fixed on the door of Brigitta's chamber. He could only guess a small portion of what had happened there this night, and of that he would say nothing until he was sure. But he drew a deep breath of wonder that such a thing could happen in these troubled days. The gods had long since withdrawn, yet it would seem that they still lived. He must go as soon as possible to the Place of Power. Surely there he would find some answer, some assurance that this thing had meaning for his people.

He heard the drone of voices about him and knew impatience. They occupied themselves only with the things of this earth, with death. Yet this night he was sure the things of the sky had touched here and brought life, not death. Truly this was the hour that legend promised, when the Sky Lords would come again!

2.

It was thickly hot within the upper chamber. Brigitta, between the waves of pain, longed to lay her swollen body in the stream which ran from the Fortunate Spring. She was dimly aware that most of the people in the fort village had been gone before sunup, out into the fields to celebrate the Feast of Lughnasa when the harvest fell to the sickle. Julia, who had been her mother's nurse, sat patiently beside her, dipping a cloth into a basin of tepid water, using that to wipe the dripping salt-sweat from the girl's face. There was a brazier in the far comer and from that came the scent of burning herbs, strong enough to make Brigitta cough and gasp when some trick of the breeze blew it in her direction. They had opened all the doors within the house, untied all knots, done what they might to make this birth an easy one. But, Brigitta thought dully, it was not easy. How could it be easy for a mortal woman to bear the son of a god?

The past months Ч how strangely they had eyed her. It was only Lugaid's prophecy which had kept the kin from laying black shame on her and so on the House of Nyren. There had been times when she would have willingly taken her own sharp dagger and cut from her living body this thing some strange force had, bred in her. It was very hard now to remember the golden happiness of her dream, though Lugaid had assured her that it had actually been no dream, but that one of the Sky Sons had come to claim her.

Now she knew nothing but the pain, and between the onset of that, the fear that the next would be worse and worse. Yet she set her teeth and would not cry out. If one bore a god's son one did not wail him into the world.

Her body heaved again and Julia was quick beside her. Then Lugaid somehow was there also, his dark eyes holding hers. And from that meeting of their gaze came a strangeness which removed her from the pain, sent her spinning far out among sparks of light which might be stars....

"A son." Julia placed the baby on the fair piece of linen ready to receive it.

"A son." Lugaid nodded as if he had had no doubts from the first that this would be so. "His name is Myrddin."

Julia looked at him with hostility. "It is the father who names the son."

"His name is Myrddin." The Druid dipped a finger into the bowl of water and touched the baby's breast. "His father would have it so."

Julia hunched a shoulder. "You talk of Sky Lords," she sniffed. "I am not denying that you saved my lady from shame with such, when there were those who believed. But there is not one even under this roof who believed wholly, or will ever do so. They will say 'son of no man' and talk tattle afar."

"Not long." Lugaid shook his head. "This will be the first of his kind and through him the old days will return. Those tales of the past are not only the words of bards meant to amuse. Within them lies a core of truth. Look to the babe, and your mistress." He glanced at Brigitta with less interest, as if, having served her purpose, she was of lesser account now.

Julia made a sound close to a snort. She bustled about caring for the child, who did not cry, but lay looking about him. In those few moments after his entrance into the world, he seemed far more aware of his surroundings than any infant should rightfully be. And the nurse, noting that odd awareness, made a certain sign before she gathered him up. Brigitta slept heavily.

It would seem that in Myrddin's early childhood Julia had the right measurement of the feeling within the kin house. He was indeed "son of-no man," but since the chief accepted Ч outwardly at any rate Ч Lugaid's assurance that his daughter had been impregnated by a Sky Lord, the boy was not openly shamed. Neither did he find any ready acceptance among those of his own generation, however.

In the first place he was oddly slow to learn. The women of the house looked on his backwardness as a fitting answer to the mystery of his conception. Nor was he forward in walking either. Had it not been for the fierce championship of Julia he might have been neglected, allowed to fade away into early death. For within six months of his birth Brigitta had been given in marriage to a widowed clan leader old enough to have fathered her. She left Nyren's fortress and her son behind.

She had made no protest over his separation for, from the hour of his birth, after she had awakened from the swoon into which she was always sure Lugaid had sent her, she had had no feeling of tenderness toward the baby. Rather the Druid appeared to have taken her place, with Julia to supply those comforts of physical existence Myrddin needed most at his age. And it was Julia who became most fiercely maternal when comments about the child's slowness were voiced aloud. It was to Lugaid that Julia appealed when her own faith in Myrddin's intelligence wavered.

"Leave him be." Lugaid had taken the child on his knee, was locking eyes with eyes. "He lives by another time, this one. You shall see. When he talks it will be clearly and with purpose; when he walks it will be straightaway walking, not crawling about after the manner of the animals. His heritage is not ours, so we cannot judge him by the actions of those wholly of this world."

Julia sat quiet for a moment, glancing from Druid to child and back again.