"Andre Norton - Witch World - Lore of the Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

the Harvest Homing dance. Straightway thereafter, Dairine dropped her
grasp upon the child's small fingers, crying out and shrinking away from
the villagers, to seek out Ingvarna's house and therein hide herself. Within
the month, Hulde had died of a fever. Thereafter, the girl used her new
sight sparingly, and always with a fear plain to be seen haunting her.

In the Year of the Weldworm, when Dairine passed into young
womanhood, Ingvarna died swiftly. As if foreseeing another possible end,
she summoned death as one summons a servant to do one's bidding.
 Though Dairine was no true Wise Woman, thereafter she took on many
of the duties of her foster mother. Within a month after the Wise
Woman's burial, the Sulcar ship returned.

As the Captain told the forgotten village the news of the greater world
his eyes turned ever to Dairine, her hands busy with thread she spun as
she listened. Among those of the village she was indeed one apart, with her
strange silver-fair hair, silver-light eyes.

Sibbald Ortis, Sibbald the Wrong-HandedтАФthus they had named him
after a sea battle had lopped off his hand, and a smith in another land had
made him one of metalтАФwas that captain. He was new to command and
youngтАФthough he had lived near all his life at sea after the manner of his
people.

Peace, after a fashion, he told them, had encompassed the land at last.
For Koris of Gorm now ruled Estcarp with a steady hand. Alizon had been
defeated in some invasion that nation had attempted overseas. And
Karsten was in chaos, one prince or lord always rising against another,
while the sea wolves were being hunted down, one after another, to a
merciless end.

Having made clear that he was in Rannock on lawful business, the
captain now turned briskly to the subject of trade. What had they, if
anything, which would be worth stowage in his own ship?

Herdrek was loathe to spread their poverty before these strangers. Also,
he wanted, with a desire he could hardly conceal, some of the tools and
weapons he had seen in casual use among them. Yet what had Rannock7
Fish dried to take them through a lean winter, some woven lengths of
wool.

The villagers would be hard put even to give these visitors guest-right,
with the feast they were entitled to. To fail in that was to deny their own
heritage.

Dairine, listening to the Captain, had wished she dared touch his hand
to learn what manner of a man he was who had journeyed so far and seen
so much. A longing was born in her to be free of the narrow, well-known
ways of Rannock, to see what lay beyond in the world. Her fingers steadily
twirled her thread, but her thoughts were elsewhere.