"Nancy Springer - Isle 03 - The Sable Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

animals and the blaze. Arundel stamped restlessly where he stood against a wall of rock. Molly stood
beside him, swaying.

"She's quite exhausted," Trevyn remarked.
"Hadn't ye better put the rope on her all the same?" Meg asked. "She'll run off ifтАФif anything should go
wrong."

Trevyn shook his head. "She will not run."

"Humor me," Meg told him pointedly. It was a phrase she had recently learned.

So he tethered the cow and came to sit by the fire. He and Meg stared silently over the flames at a wall
of darkness beyond. Trevyn felt satisfied with the sizable pile of wood he had brought in, and the rock
that half surrounded them retained the fire's heat almost as well as a house. Still, he had to admit that their
situation-lacked a certain comfort.

"Nothing to eat," Meg sighed.

"Ay." Trevyn grinned at the hint. "You're right, Meg, I've nothing."

"Drat." She shifted her position, trying to ease the contact of her bones with the hard ground. "Well,
there's no use sitting here like dummies all night, waiting for shadows. Let's have a story." . "Certainly," he
said agreeably. "Go ahead."

"Nay, nay, I mean a story of Laueroc! Something about courage, something to speed our blood, give us
heartтАФa story of the Sun Kings!"

"Oh," he remarked.

"You're from Laueroc," she prodded impatiently. "Surely you know what I mean."

He did indeed. But it was not their courage that he valued most in his uncle and father.

"It's not quite what you have in mind," he said slowly, "but it's a beautiful tale. Have you ever heard
about the Sun Kings and the proud lord of Caerronan?"

"Nay!" She clapped delightedly.



"Nay?" he exclaimed with mock surprise; he knew that the story was not told outside his family. "Well, it
took place only a few months after King Hal and King Alan were crowned. ..."

He felt strange, speaking of them so impersonally. As if his mind had been disjointed, bent to a new
angle, he saw them differently, envisioning them as he had never actually known them, when they were
nearly as young as he.

Here is the tale Trevyn told:

The young Sun Kings missed their wandering life, and they got tired of courtly ceremony. So sometimes,