"Springer, Nancy - Book Of The Isle 05 - Golden Swan v1 0.rtf" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

"Did she say you would find Shamarra in the east?"
"No," he admitted. "She did not say where Shamarra was at all. She said you would help me."
"But did she say what I was to help you to do?"
ХHe sighed. "Some nonsense about fern flower," he said, "and fire meeting flood."
I sat thinking of my own quest. The Source lay east, if I could judge by the remembered lore of the elves and the yearning that sang to me from the rising sun. I tried not to let my judgment be skewed by the tug that was on me. NoЧthe truth was plain, tug or no tug.
"Shamarra is not your true quest," I said.
I saw his eyebrows leap up. He did not feel well enough acquainted with me to argue, but I knew he did not agree. And I knew just as surely that I would be taking him with me to the Source.
Dair meandered in. He .had been out foraging, and he looked pleased with himself and with the world at large. He carried a basket full of mushrooms and blackberries, and he wore a sort of breechclout in deference to Dorcas's squeamishness. I remembered the days when Trevyn used to go about like that, and my heart swelled.
"Come here," I said to him. "I was just about to tell Frain that I am to go on a journey."
I noticed your bags. He came over and sat at the table with us. When will you leave?
"Not for several days. Not until you two have had a . chance to rest. Frain does not look well."
He has been very ill.
"I wish I could understand you two," Frain sighed.
I switched to Traderstongue. It would be difficult to explain myself to him in such a clumsy tongue. It would have been difficult to explain my reasons in any language of man. I knew what I was doing or to do in one sense, a nighttime sense, a dream sense, but in the daytime sense I did not know in the least what I was about. I had a vague notion what Dair was for, and that was all.
"I have been seeing flowers made of red flame in the sunrise," I said tentatively, "and in the hearth, and I have been hearing voices in the night when I am half asleep, voices telling me it is time the old woman came out of her wood. I have sometimes thought that the One has been talking to me. I wish I were foolish enough to feel sure. At any rate, I have made up my mind. I must leave this place and set out to find the Source."
Frain merely nodded. It was nothing to him what I did.
He was not seeing the safe haven of thirty years left be-hind.
"And I feel quite certain, Frain, that you are to come with me."
He sat up at attention then. "Only if Shamarra might be there," he said.
Little did I know of Shamarra and her vengeful ways. "She might be there or anywhere," I declared, resorting to sophistry, certain that he would not respond to better truth. This birdwoman was the least pressing of his needs, I knew that by then, but she gave the only hold I had on him. I would bribe him into obedience by means of Shamarra.
"And if she is there how are you to recognize her?" I demanded. "And even if she were to sit on your hand in bird form, how would you speak to her? If you cannot understand Dair, you will not be able to understand a night bird."
His shoulders sagged. "The goddess said I would not be able toЧwell, help her," he mumbled. "But I have to keep on trying, don't you see? Because ofЧthe way I am."
I stifled a sigh of exasperation.
"There is a song the elves used to singЧ" I began.
"Elves?" he interrupted.
"The old folk, a fair, tall race. Those who went before." Did he know nothing? "They sailed to Elwestrand. None have set foot on the mainland for tens of thousands of years, but some of us still remember them and the Source ; whence they came, they and their bright stones." I stared down his doubt. "There is a song they used to sing, and it is in Dal Solden, too, I believe, the mystic Book of Suns. A song about the Source and the magical fern that grows there.
Fern flower, fire flower,
Burn, burn when the great tide turns.
Fern flower, show your power.
The Swan Lord will be there to see,
To grasp the stem that burns
And speak with thee, learn melody, and sing with wind and tree."
Dair sat looking at me in suppressed excitement, and Frain quite blankly.
"But it is nonsense," he protested. "Ferns don't have flowers."
"That is why this one is so singular," I said. "The legend is that the flower of this fern, if plucked at the proper time, will give the bearer power to understand almost anythingЧthe speech of water and trees and wind and even stars." I took significant pause. "And, of course, birds."
"You mean Shamarra?" Frain jumped as if he had been jabbed. "But when is the proper time?"
_"Midnight on Midsummer's Eve."
"ButЧis it far?" Midsummer was nearly upon us.
"Very far, I imagine. We might get there by this time next year."
"Another year!" he groaned.
"You have nearly infinite years before you," I reminded him gently. "And so has Shamarra."
That settled him. "What is this Source?" he inquired, with the first real, sensible interest he had shown. "The Source of what?"
"Of everything! All that is." I looked at him in surprise. "Does no one tell tales of the Source in your land, of the Beginning?"
"Of Adalis, of how she lay upon the flood and mothered forth all that is in ValeЧ"
"Well," I Said rather too sharply, "you have seen that there is more to the world than Vale."
"Adalis is true goddess," he returned just as sharply. "I have seen that as well."
"She is in Aene." I smoothed the edge off my voice. Ignorant he might be, but he was courageous, and he was there, in my house, in the fleshЧan exceptional event. There had to be some reason for it. And he was arching his brows again.
"The nameless One," I explained. I had used the elfin word; my mistake. "Aene is sun, moon, empty sky and all that is on earth. Aene is dawn and dusk. Aene sang the world into being. The Source is the place of that singing. Strong magic is there."
What else is there? Dair asked.
There was a quality about Dair that was too goodnatured to be called irreverence or flippancy; it was only that he was so very blunt. Frain sensed the tone of the question even though he could not apprehend the content, and he laughed out loud. I had to smile.