"Norton, Andre - Gryphon Saga 1 - Crystal Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

"Kneel before me, Joisan. Take this bowl within your two hands and hold it level and steady."

I did as she bade, cupping my palms, one on either side of the bowl, holding it as one might hold a firebranch that might be ignited at any moment. Then she leaned forward and touched the fingers of her right hand to my forehead.

"Look upon the wine; think of it as a picture - a picture - " Oddly enough her voice sounded farther and farther away. As I looked down into the bowl, I was no longer seeing only
dark liquid. It was rather as if I hung suspended in the air above a wide, borderless expanse of darkness, a giant mirror with none of the brilliance a true mirror possesses.

There came a misting, a change on that surface. Tendrils of the mist became shadow forms. I saw a round ball that glinted and, entombed in that, a form familiar to me - that of a gryphon gleaming white.

At first the ball was very large, near filling the whole of the mirror. Then it shrank swiftly, and I saw it was fastened to a chain. The chain swung from a hand, so that the ball revolved. The gryphon in it sometimes faced me, sometimes faced away. But there grew in me the knowledge that this ball was of great importance.

It was very small now, for the hand that dangled it was also shrinking. The arm to which it was attached, and then the body belonging to the arm, appeared. Now a man stood there. His face was turned from me, hidden. He wore war mail, the hood drawn up about his throat. There was a battle sword girded to him, and over bis shoulder I saw the arch of a crossbow. But he wore no House tabard, nothing to identify him, only that swinging ball. Then he left, tramping away as if he had been summoned elsewhere. The mirror was dark and empty; nor did any more shadows gather there.

Malwinna's hand fell from my forehead. As I raised my eyes to blink and blink again, I saw a woeful pallor on her face. So I quickly set aside the bowl and dared to take her hands within mine, striving to help her.

She smiled weakly. "It draws the strength - the more when one has little strength left. But it was laid on me to do this thing. Tell me, my daughter, what did you learn?"

"You did not see it, then?" I was surprised.

"No. It was not a farseeing for me, that I knew. It was yours only."

I told her what I had seen: the gryphon englobed and a man in battle dress holding it. And I ended, "The gryphon is the badge of the House of Ulm. Did I then see the Lord Kerovan to whom I am wed?"

"That may be so," she agreed. "But it is in my mind that the gryphon is that which is of the greatest importance to your future. If such ever comes to your hand, my daughter, do you guard it well. For it is also to be believed that this is a thing of the Old Ones and a focus of some power they once knew. Now, call Dame Alousan, for I have need of one of her strengthening cordials. But speak not of what we have done here this morning, for farseeing is a private thing and not to be talked of lightly."

I said naught to any of the Dames, nor to Math. And the Past-Abbess allowed them to believe that she was merely a little wearied, so they fussed about her, for she was greatly loved. No one paid any attention to me. I had taken the bowl with me into the guesting room and put it on the table there.

Though I continued to look into it now and again I saw nothing but the wine; no dark mirror, no shadows moving. Yet in my mind was so vivid a picture of that I could have painted it, had I any skill in limning, in every small detail. And I speculated as to what it might mean. The gryphon so enclosed had differences from the one that appeared as Ulm's badge. A gryphon by rights had the wings and forepart of an eagle: its front legs end in a bird of prey's strong talons. But the rear, the tail, the hind paws are those of a lion, one of the beasts known to the south alone. On its bird's head a lion's ears stand upright.

In the ancient learning the gryphon symbolizes gold: the warmth and majesty of the sun. Ofttimes in legends it is the guardian of hidden treasure.

Thus the gryphon is mainly pictured in red and gold, which are sun colors. Yet the one enclosed in the globe was the white of ice - a white gryphon.

Shortly after that farseeing, Dame Math and I returned home to Ithkrypt. But we did not remain there long. For in this Year of the Crowned Swan I had reached the age of fourteen, and Dame Math was already preparing my bride clothes and the furnishings I would take with me when Kerovan would send for me, as was the custom, in the next year or two.

So we went on to Trevamper, that town set at the meeting of highway and river where all merchants in the north show their wares upon occasion. Even the Sulcarmen, who are sea-rovers and seldom come far from wind and wave, travel to Trevamper. For there is the ulterior trade. And by chance we met there also my Aunt Islaugha, her son Toross, and her daughter Ynglida.

She came to pay a call on Dame Math, but I felt it was one of duty only and there was little liking between these sisters. However the Lady Islaugha presented a smiling face and spoke us fair, congratulating me on the fine marriage that had united me to the House of Ulm.

Yngilda pushed closer to me when our elders had turned their attention back to their own concerns, and I thought she stared rudely. She was a stout girl, bundled in rich clothing down which her braids rippled, their ends bound in ribbons hung with little silver bells meant to chime sweetly as she moved. Such a conceit did not suit her broad, flattish face, with its too-small mouth always pursed a little as if she chewed upon a spicy secret she debated over sharing.

"You have seen the likeness of your lord?" she asked almost abruptly.

I stirred uneasily under the probing of her eyes. I knew her then for unfriend, though why she should be so when we hardly knew each other, I could not guess.

"No." As always when such uneasiness with others was in me, I was wary. But the truth is better than any evasion which may later trip one up. And for the first time I wondered a little at a matter I had never considered before. Why had Kerovan not caused to be sent a likeness of himself? That such was done in axe marriages I knew.

"A pity." Her gaze seemed to have some manner of triumph in it now. "Look you here - this is my promised lord, Elvan of Rishdale." She brought out of her belt pocket an oblong of wood with a face painted on it. "He sent it with his bride gift two years ago."

The painted face was that of a man of middle years, no boy. And it was not a pleasant countenance to my thinking, but perhaps the limner had either not been skillful or had some reason not to flatter this Elvan. That Yngilda was proud of it was plain.