"Springer, Nancy - Book Of The Isle 3 - Sable Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

"Only to make her a whore for his own lusts' sake. . . . Nay, Freca, no such thing!" Emrist made startled protest against Trevyn's thought, which he had heard like speech. "You cannot use that name against him. You could bring the castle down on top of us, but, what is worse, if Wael learned that name and survived to use it, he would become invincible. Do not even think of it in his presence." Emrist quirked a wry smile. "I know you are practiced at hiding your thoughts."
"Then how are we to face him?" Trevyn demanded.
"That is as it comes. For your part, I hope that endurance is all that will be necessary, for the time."
The next morning Trevyn awoke to find himself looking into the long, mournful countenance of a horse. Its whiskery nostrils were poised within inches of his face. He reached up to grasp the halter, then scrambled to his feet and looked the beast over. It appeared to be a pack horse that had escaped from some trader's train-hardly a luxury animal, but suitable enough to carry Emrist to Kantukal. And the pack on its back contained a quantity of very barterable goods.
"I think the goddess is over her pique," Trevyn called.
Emrist sat up painfully and stared at the horse with distaste. "Don't press her," he said finally. "We're likely to find ourselves in trouble on that beast's account."
"Nay, I think the Lady has made us a gift of it. Food, Emrist, we shall have food! Come on, get up!"
He badgered Emrist onto the horse's back and traded for bread and cheese with the first cottage wife he could find, making a very bad bargain of it; he didn't care. That day, with Emrist mounted, they went along steadily, reached the Way, and turned south at last, keeping an eye out for kingsmen who

might recognize Trevyn. And he was hardly inconspicuous: a golden-haired youth with sword at side leading a mouse-colored, plodding nag on which sat a companion perched atop a packsaddle! Some changes had to be made, and that evening at their campsite they attended to it.
"If you are going to ride," Trevyn decided, "you must look like a horseman."
So Emrist had to wear the sword and a cloak, for rank. He would sit on a gaily patterned blanket. Trevyn attached reins to the horse's halter, hackamore style, and brushed the animal up a bit. In these warm lands, even men of rank went bare-legged and sandal-shod during the summer. Mounted on his nag, Emrist might be able to look the part of a very minor noble.
"And, if it is not too outrageous to be endured," Emrist suggested tartly, "might we sully that crowning glory of yours?"
A more humble servitor went forth the next morning,, a sun-browned fellow with flattened, grimy hair of an indeterminate muddy hue. Trevyn would not have appreciated knowing how much, except for his eyes, he looked like Gwern. There was nothing to be done about the sea-green eyes, startlingly bright in his tanned face. He cast them down, as befits a mannerly slave, and took care to lag a step or two behind his master. A horseman traveling with a slave in attendance was no rarity. Kingsmen passed them with a nod.
In a few days they came out of the jagged hilt country and onto the great plain that stretched all the way to Kantukal, a flat, dusty expanse planted with famished beans and vines. They traveled it for over a week. Now and then the road crossed streams trickling deep in baked beds, each with a fringe of bright green grass. Everything else looked faded and worn, like a poor woman's dress. The occasional kingsmen on the Way seemed interested only in putting this comfortless region behind them. The sun beat down without surcease. Trevyn and Emrist moved steadily through the days, camped gratefully in the cool of evening, and sometimes talked late into the night. The journey had become an interlude for them, an entity in itself; they did not think too much about the end of it. They clung quietly to the fellowship of the road.

It must have been their tenth day on the plain, walking through the sweltering heat of southern Tokar, that Trevyn felt a breeze and smelled salt in the air. Gulls wheeled far ahead. With one accord he and Emrist stopped a moment in the road, staring at the birds and then at each other.
"We, are nearing our journey's end," Trevyn said. Emrist wordlessly nodded.
By evening they could see the towers of Kantukal rising hazily out of the flat horizon. Beyond the town, more sensed than seen, lay the glimmer of the southern sea.
Trevyn and Emrist camped in a grove of acacia that night. The lamps of Kantukal colored their sky, tree trunks loomed darkly all around, and dread weighted their hearts.

Chapter Five
"We must have a plan," Trevyn insisted.
"With childlike obstinacy, he desperately believed that something could be done to improve their chances of defeating Wael. Emrist sighed wearily, for they had been through this discussion before. Moreover, he had his own reasons for melancholy.
"How can we plan for such idiocy?" he grumbled. "Trust the tide, Freca."
"I'd rather depend on something I can control. This parchment, for instance."
"Control?" parried Emrist dryly. "Leave control to Wael, and perhaps he will manage to destroy himself, and perhaps not us."
Trevyn did not answer, but pulled out the parchment with silent stubbornness and unfurled it in the firelight. He could not be sure, in that orange glow, whether the emblem of the wolf was shining with its own spectral light. He took care not to touch it. He read the heading again, "On the Transferring of the Living Soul," and the text, and found that it made no more sense to him than ever. Most of it was in a harsh language that neither he nor Emrist understood. Emrist used

it as Wael would use the Old Language, without comprehension.
"This is a property of Wael's cult," Trevyn said.
"Ay, to be sure. I took it-well, no matter how I come to have it. I have never been sure how to use it. I believe it is not merely a document, but a magical thing, a talisman. Note the sheen of the device."
"I've noted it," Trevyn replied sourly. "Perhaps Wael wants this parchment back. We could trade it to him for the brooch."
Emrist gravely sucked his cheeks. "Only as a last resort. It is sure to increase his power. But it saps ours; such an evil thing cannot be used for good without a dire struggle."
"Ay, I can feel it draw." Trevyn put it away and sat back with a sigh. "If only I knew Wael's sooth-name. ..."
"Ah," the magician mocked gently. "If."
"Who was he born of, Emrist? Where is he from?"
Emrist shrugged. "Who knows? He seems to have some connection with Isle. I think he is probably Waverly, Iscovar's old sorcerer. But he could have been Marrok, who tried to win the magical sword Hau Ferddas by a spell. Or even old Pel Blagden himself, he who was vanquished in the dragon lairs of inner earth. . . . Sorcerers are like the mighty folk of legend. Gods fight and are slain, goddesses sorrow and pass away, but in a sense they never really die."
Trevyn sat up in sudden abeyance, open-mouthed and breathless, utterly forgetting Wael. Something had moved deep in Emrist's gold-flecked eyes, something that filled him with a pang of loss and longing and, nearly, recognition. "And you, Emrist," he gulped at last. "What legend from out of the past are you?"
"I am myself, young, spent, and sickly!" Indeed, Emrist looked like no legend just then. He sat huddled by the fire, hunched in pain and perhaps in despair. But after a moment he looked up, caught Trevyn with a clear glance, determined to give the Prince what he could. All he could.
"Do you know the legend of the star-son, Alberic?"
"I know what Hal has told me of Bevan," Trevyn stammered, shaken anew that Emrist had called him by his true-name. "His comrade Cuin won him Hau Ferddas from

the dragons of Lyrdion. Bevan lighted it with the power of his argent hand, defeated Pel Blagden, the Mantled God. . . . Later he left the sword with Cuin and sailed to Elwestrand. That was over a thousand years ago."
"Ay, he was a star-son, and Hal, too. But the legend is older than either. Patience a moment." Emrist settled himself tenderly against a tree, watching the ebb and flow of the fire. Presently he spoke, his eyes still on the iridescent shimmer just above the restless flames.
"The story begins so long ago that the sky was still sea, the sun not yet thought of, and the moon was a pearly island on the tides. In those days the moon-mother gave birth to a star-son, for that Lady is by nature a bearer of sons and needs no help to conceive. But this was her first and best beloved son, though she has had many since. The baby grew quickly to a boy and a young man. But, except for his mother, he lived all alone on the island. So one day, when she found him sad, his mother gave him a silver harp that sang by itself to amuse him and keep him company. And the harp sang of a place where all his unborn brothers lived, the faraway dancing ground of souls, where all selves are part of one. Inconsolable longing took hold of the moon-mother's son.
" 'All of life is but a decay unto death,' he exclaimed. 'Let me go to that marvelous place, Mother, quickly, before I start to wane.'
" 'Death is only a journey and a change,' his mother protested. 'Stay! Look, I can give you powers to make your own marvels, and your own fair light to adorn you.' And she gave the gifts.
" 'Still I must sail,' said the youth, and left the pearly land. Some say he went on a swan, or on a silver boat like a hollow crescent moon. Others say he sailed on the silver harp itself. Whatever the means, he left to wander, glowing with his own white light, across the midnight deeps like the wandering stars.
"Then the moon-mother faded and went dark. And in her despair, and not recognizing the nature of her own change, she went to the great dragon that girded the deep, the one that Sun drove down later. And she lay with the dragon and conceived. So she waxed again, great with child. But her new