"Melanie Rawn - Exiles 1 - The Ruins of Ambrai" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

Fief.

In the Council Year 942, Scraller's latest acquisition had no knowledge of economic or
political matters. He knew that he had been safe, and now was not; that he'd been sold, and
did not like it. And when Scraller's markтАФthe inevitable galazhiтАФwas painfully etched in
yellow ink on his right shoulder, he knew it was all real. The warm hearth and the woman's
soft singing were gone forever.

Eventually he was found to be quick of mind, so he was given the rudiments of an
educationтАФjust enough to make him a more useful servant to his master. He was taught to
read and write, and showed an aptitude for mathematics. But it was several years before his
real value became apparent.

He was a musician born. To him, notes on a page were like numbers in a column that added
up to a sumтАФor a song.

Cool, precise, with only one right answer, music and mathematics were the same to him.

It took a Bard silenced forever and a Lady of ancient Blood to teach him that they weren't the
same at all.

Scraller had no need of another steward to count his wealth, his slaves, or his crimes. What he
did require, for the elevation of his court to elegance, was a truly gifted musician. And this
was what became of the boy spared from death by the wind.

He retained precisely one possession from the time before the wind and the brigands: his
name. Though he was given a new one, he stubbornly clung to the only thing he owned. So,
after a few weeks of slaps when he did not answer to the new name, they shrugged and gave
in. He was only a little boy, after all. He couldn't be expected to learn as swiftly as an older
child. And what did it matter what he was called, as long as he caused no trouble?

It was the first of Collan's victories, and for many years was his last.
 Chapter 2

His first summer at Scraller's Fief, Collan was judged deft enough with his big, long-fingered
hands to leave Cradle Quarters and start justifying the gold the Slavemaster had paid for
him. At first he was assigned to the kitchens. Simple tasks: shelling nuts, washing vegetables,
plucking fowl. Scraller's household numbered well over three thousand, and feeding so many
was a lot of work. Col also spent many hours on the hearth treadmills, walking or running as
the cooks demanded to turn spits over the fire. He remembered little of that time except
exhaustion and heat. But never in his adult life would he enter a kitchen in castle or cottage
without feeling slightly nauseated.
Although he couldn't have spent more than a few hours each day at this exhausting task, it
seemed his life consisted solely of treadmill and pallet for years. The work toughened him at
an early ageтАФwhich was part of the process. Toughening the body while breaking the spirit
was the rule.

They underestimated Collan badly.

One morningтАФhe must have been about sixтАФhe was liberated forever from the kitchen. For