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

"Ask anything you like for yourself, King of Isle, but ask nothing for your friend. He does not know me." She sounded annoyed. "You have summoned me hereЧ"
"It is for myself, Alys, for my heart has gone out to him. Help him. Please."
"He has no wisdom. He is no better than a child."
"As I was when you first knew me. If he is ignorant, then he needs your guidance the more. Mother, he has felt the touch of your hand, I know he has."
Frain sat by himself, trembling at the strangeness of the voice in the night and not able to understand what was being said, for of course Alys and Trevyn spoke in the Old Language. I wanted to go to Frain, but I knew he would take no comfort from my closeness.
Alys sighed, a breath of wind.
"Alberic, you greathearted nuisanceЧ" she said, and there was a puff of red light, red as fire, and the most horrible of hags confronted us from midair. It struck terror into me, I felt my sweat run, and it wrung a stifled scream from Frain.
"The Lady is out of humor," Trevyn said tightly in Traderstongue, speaking to Frain. "She is not usually soЧ unlovely."
"He knows that," Alys snapped. In quick succession she took form as swan, red roe deer, raven, white horse, and a woman holding three red apples in her hands. She was blonde, gray eyed, grave. "Adalis," Frain whispered.
"I am all of these and more," Alys acknowledged. Suddenly a shimmering beauty stood in the night, a woman who shone like running water, her hair a silky torrent of silvergold, her soft green robe flowing to her feet. Frain jumped up with a cry. "Shamarra!" he gasped, but as he moved the vision shifted shape. A ragged brown bird stood there instead.
"Why did you do it to her, why!" Frain shouted, sobbing, plunging forward. But on the instant the bird stretched hugely, horribly, a nightmare thing, it was a feathered serpent rippling up over our heads, then something with horns, then something with a woman's laughing, shrieking headЧall fast, too fast to fathom. It hissed and writhed and menaced, sending Frain staggering back with the shock of it. I caught him as he nearly fell, and in an instant Trevyn was beside us as well, and the goddess laughed and laughed in the night.
"Why does she laugh?" Frain asked Trevyn from between clenched teeth.
"She says you are a fool to think Shamarra still stands and weeps."
More words came as the goddess's amusement calmed somewhat.
"She says Shamarra is not one to weep for long. Did she not send her minions against Tirell even before you left Vale, overstepping her authority? She was punished, but at this very moment she coldly plans her more fitting and lasting revenge. Frain, beware, Alys says. Shamarra makes a puissant enemy."
"But Shamarra is not my enemy!" Frain cried. "She is my beloved!"
The goddess had quieted and taken her most fair and simple form, a moonlike orb, pearly white. It flared briefly in Warning, white fire, and Trevyn put an arm around Frain.
"She says you are your own worst enemy. Hush, do not argue, listen. She speaks."
She told us the tale of the crippled swan, and as she did so Trevyn told it to Frain in words he could understand.
In ancient times in Vale, it seemed, there had been two princes, twins, one light and one dark. They were sons of the goddess. And the light one was raised as the king's favored son, and he was called Doray, meaning Golden. But the dark one was taken as an infant to Acheron and left there to die. The All-Mother in form of Eala the swan took pity on him and gathered him under her wing, and he lived.
Doray knew nothing of his brother. But in an inner sense he always missed Mm, and he grew up warmthless and fey. One day when he was yet small he tore from his nurse's grasp and hurled himself over the battlements. He survived the fall, but it left him with a crippled, useless arm. "I was only trying to fly," he said.
The king's vassals would not accept the odd, crippled boy as heir, and when Doray was a youth they rose up against his father and him. The king was killed and Doray fled to Acheron, where he knew no one would follow him. He walked through the twisted trees and climbed the crags of despair. He came to the dark lake and stepped into it, and because he was of immortal sort he became a swan, a fair swan white as asphodel, white as white lotus. But his wing hung useless in the water, and still he could not fly. A black reflection looked back at him from the water.
"Who are you?" he asked it.
"I am Arget," the black swan replied, "your brother, whom you have never known. Search for me." ' "But how can you be my brother, you who are black?"
"Search for me," Arget said.
Doray left the lake and was human once more.
So he went on yet again, through the forest of fear, up the barrier mountains. In time he found a youth sleepingЧХ it was Arget. A warm feeling went through him that he had never known. He awakened him, and they embraced.
They wandered, befriending each other. When they felt the bond complete, they made their way back to the dark and mirroring lake. Both stepped in together. Then a single white swan floated there, and its image in the water, white, and its wing was well and whole.
"You can fly now," Arget said from the lake, the reflection said. "I am at one with you now, as I ought to be. Fly."
The goddess grew still. The tale was done.
"Did he fly away?" Frain asked after a silence.
"Who knows? The tale is your own, Frain, and you Will show us the end to it."
"But how so?" Frain creased his brow in puzzlement. "Do I have a brother of whom I know nothing?"
"The dark twin, the one within. You have seen him."
Frain shuddered and seemed to shrink back. "What does all this have to do with Shamarra?" he asked.
"Little enough."
"ButЧ"
"Shamarra wants nothing but vengeance," the goddess warned. "And your love of her means nothing, not even protection, for you will not be able to face her until you have touched the opposing threads of your own life."
Trevyn translated that with some difficulty. "Threads?" Frain murmured in bewilderment when he was done.
"As on the loom," the goddess said impatiently. "Must I explain everything? No good will come to you until dog meets wolf. You are but a puppy now, in puppy loveЧ is it truly Shamarra you seek?"
The question caused Frain some unease. He stood breathing heavily. "If Shamarra is death, yes," he said at last.
"Shamarra is danger, but your death will not be so easy to come by. You are an immortal, by your own folly, and your destiny is woven into the pattern. Shamarra is an aspect of Vieyra the hag who is a form of my being which is a mask worn by the nameless One who is infiniteЧand you are the merest thread in the cloak of the infinite, Frain. You are a fleck, a cloud wisp, a leaf floating on the turning tide, no more."
He stood silent.
"No, Frain, it is your own deliverance you seek," Alys said in tones of boredom, the moonlike circle of light said, faintly pulsing.
"ShamarraЧ" Frain began. He must have been bewitched to cleave so to thoughts of Shamarra.
"She does not care about you," the goddess snapped. "And she will squash you like a fly if you come between her and her prey. Now listen, if you are to be of any use."
"Use to whom?" Frain asked warily.
"Such temerity." The goddess did not sound amused. "Listen, I say. When fire weds with flood, redemption will come to you, no sooner. When you have known the power of the fern flower, it will come to you. That is your quest] Go now."
"But where?"
"East." The moonform of the goddess. dimmed inter dusk, then darkness. "Maeve and Dair will help you," added a voice in the night. A breeze blew, and then all was silent.