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

blazing bonfire. Dogs and cats slunk and scrabbled underfoot, their yowls underscoring the
babble of three hundred diners. All the ladies wore bright gowns and elaborate headpieces,
some so fantastically antennaed as to imperil their neighbors' eyesight. All the men were
formally robed and coifed, though some dared to leave their top shirt buttons undone to hint
at a furred chest.

Scraller himself was one of these. His crimson coif was embroidered with his cherished sigil
and decorated with jewels, and his robes were properly concealing as befitted a modest male,
but his shirt was open to the breastbone. The wiry black hair thus revealed had bits of dinner
clinging to it.
Collan strode forward and made his bows to the ladies and then to Scraller, as instructed. He
ran a nervous hand through his hair as he straightened up. This unconscious emphasis on his
uncovered state did not amuse Scraller. He drew breath to condemn the boyтАФthen noted
that all but the stuffiest of his female guests had begun to smile.

He scrutinized his possession. A handsome child, no doubt of it: manly, despite his scant
years; well-formed, for all his scrawniness. The ladies were imagining him fifteen inches of
height, ten years of age, and eighty pounds of solid muscle into the future. And Scraller saw
not just their admiration but his own profit gleaming in their gazes.

"Sing, boy," he commanded, and eased his spindly form back in a chair with galazhi-horn
finials.

Anyone less proudтАФor more perceptiveтАФwould have sought to please his audience. Collan
never made music except to please himself. Carlon deplored this fault in presentation ("Sing
to me , not the empty air! Look in my eyes!"), but had to admit that the boy's aloofness was
intriguing. Collan never sang for anyone; he merely allowed others to listen, not much caring
if they did or not. In his whole life he found only two people he truly wanted to sing forтАФand
when he did, the music was such to win and break hearts.

But because those two persons did not yet exist in his lifeтАФindeed, one of them was not yet
bornтАФCol played and sang for his own satisfaction. His very indifference to audience
reaction made him a triumph that night and at every banquet thereafter for the next four
years. Word spread that Scraller possessed a slave with a voice and fingers inspired by St.
Velenne herself. Offers were made, all of which Scraller turned down. Col was excused from
running errands, tending animals, and any work that might damage his hands or expose his
voice to dangerous weather. His sole daily occupations were music practice with Carlon,
lessons with Taguare, and acting as Scraller's personal page.

Oddly, he missed the animals, even though it was nice not to stink anymore. Pigs and
galazhi and horses demanded nothing of him but friendly care. He definitely did not miss
scurrying around the maze of the fief at the whim of ill-tempered stewards.

He purely loathed the hours he spent with Scraller.

There was no physical abuse. He was much too precious a commodity. Scraller's taste didn't
run to boys, anyway. But his very praise and attention, growing more lavish as Col's worth
grew, became emotional abuse. When it was found that the boy spoke as pleasingly as he
sang, the abuse became intellectual as well. In those four years, he read aloud more
excruciatingly bad poetry, more blazingly false history, and more disgustingly turgid