"Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 07 - A Wizard In Midgard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

I tried to submit, I tried not to protest or fight back, but I couldn't help
myself, and they beat me all the harder for it. I tried to accept my fate, to
submit to the lot the Norns had spun me, to give myself to the weird that had
found me, but I couldn't help my anger at the injustice of it! I fled, I
escaped, I ran, and I'm sure they're on my trail with their hounds and their
whips! Please, can't you hide me?"
Morag's face reflected every ounce of Alea's pain, but she only said to the
boys, quite severely, "Don't you ever treat a woman like that! Giant, Midgarder,
or dwarf, no lass should ever have to fear a man's attentions! I'd be ashamed of
you forever if you did!"
They both gulped and looked up wide-eyed, shaking their heads, but Jorak gave a
guilty glance at Alea. She seethed, and the anger and hurt almost made her blurt
out what they had tried to do-but they'd backed off when she rebuked them, and
she couldn't find it in her heart to take away from them the sanctuary for which
she herself longed. She only said to Gorkin, "It's not right!"
"It is not your weird," he countered. "It doesn't find you, lass-you find it.
You must read your weird, and if it's not to be a meek slave among the
Midgarders, then that's not what the Norns have spun for you. You were right to
run-but we're not your weird either. You must keep seeking until you find it."
"But what if the Midgarders find me first?"
"Then escape again, and again and again as long as there's breath in your body,"
Gorkin told her. "Never give in, never give up!"
"Where am I to go?" Alea cried, near tears. 'The real people make me their slave
and their whore, and you won't take me in! Where could I go?"
"We are real people, too." Gorkin's voice was very gentle again. He smiled at
her shocked stare. "Aye, that surprises you, doesn't it? But there's not a giant
alive whose grandmother or grandfather or ancestor somewhere wasn't a Midgarder,
lass, an ordinary person like any of them. How could their children be any less
real? Nay, we have sorrows and joys like any of you, angers and delights, loves
and hates, all of them, and we worship the same gods as the Midgarders and try
to hold back the worst of our angers and hatreds. Oh, we're real people-too,
right enough."
Alea could only stare, stunned by the revelation. All the horror stories of her
childhood seemed to echo inside her head, all lies, lies!
"But we can't take you in, you see," Gorkin said sadly. "You've said yourself
that they didn't cast you out-that you ran away, as you should have. You can
see, though, that we can't be sure you're not a spy, that you might not slay
your host in her bed and creep out to open the gates at night and let in a host
of Midgarders to slay us all." He raised a palm to forestall her protest. "No, I
don't accuse you of that, and I don't really believe it for a second-but I can't
be sure, you see, and it's possible."
Alea couldn't hold the tears in any longer; they began to trickle down her
cheeks.
"Och, I'm sorry, lass," Morag said, as though her heart were breaking. "If you'd
been born to a pair of us, it would have been a different matter, but they're
the only small folk we can allow among us. If we let more Midgarders in, the day
would come when there would be more of them than there would be of us-and you
may be sure there would be spies among them. Oh, one or two of your folk might
come among us and be glad and grateful, but if there were a hundred, the old
fear and hatred of their cradle-songs and granny-stories would come boiling up,