"Christopher Stasheff - Warlock 09 - The Warlocks Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

cottage with him, letting her head rest against his shoulder.
Finally, Rod turned to smile down at her. "We haven't done badly, have we?"
Her eyes glowed up at him, and she nodded. "Yet 'twill bide, and await our return.
Come away, husband, and let the poor house rest."
 "Thou art silent, my lord," Gwen noted.
"Is it all that unusual?" Rod looked up in surprise.
"Well, nay," Gwen said carefully, "yet it doth usually betokenтАж"
"You mean the only time I shut up is when I'm surly."
"Nay, I had not saidтАж"
"Actually, I thought I was a pretty good listener."
"Oh, thou art, thou ever art!" Gwen clasped his hand, where it held the reins in front
of her. "When I have need, thou art ever ready to hearken! Yet I do feel lorn, when
thou dost lose thyself in thoughts I ken not."
"Silly goose! Come, share my silence awhile!" And his arms tightened around her.
So she was quiet, leaning back against him, watching the children as they swooped
and soared over the fields along the roadside; their laughter came to her like the
chiming of wind-bells on the breeze. Then she looked up at the forest looming before
them and said, "I do, my lordтАФyet I know thy thoughts are not of me."
It took a second before she heard his gentle laugh. "Are you so selfish, then, that
you can never spare my mind for other matters?"
She heard the humor, and relaxed a bit. "Ever, though I do rejoice to hear
themтАФyet there's thought, and there's brooding. Where do thy dark thoughts stray, my
lord?"
Rod sighed. "To the past, my dear. Just trying to reckon how long it's been since I
had a real, genuine vacation. Of course, while I was a bachelor, I wound up with a lot
of free time between jobsтАФbut those weren't vacations, they were bouts of periodic
unemployment. Does our honeymoon count?"
Gwen smiled, and nestled back against him more snugly. "Mayhap, though we had
great tasks indeed before us that fortnight, coming to know one another in a new and
wondrous way. Yet there was the score of months thereafter, when thou wert
estranged from the King and Queen, whiles I did carry Magnus and thou didst build
our cottageтАж"
"Yeah, and the elves showed me how. I still think they did more of the buildingтАж"
Gwen hurried past that part; no point in telling him what had really held the stones
up while the elves finished setting them. "тАж And that first year of his infant life, 'til Their
Majesties had need of thee again, and sought to heal the breach."
"I'm the one who did the healing, as I remember it; they just found a job for me. And
it seems as though they've kept it up; even when the big fights are over, they find these
little informational trips for me to make, or need my advice about so-and-so's new
ideaтАж"
"Mayhap a part of it is that we do abide close by them."
Rod sighed. "Yeah, maybe we do need a change of scenery to really relax." He
looked up about himself, somewhat surprised. "And it looks as though we've had one.
When did we come into the forest?"
Broad branches spread a canopy above them, stemming from tall old trees,
foot-thick and rough-barked, with here and there a yard-wide veteran soaring up into
the dim, dark greenery aboveтАФa murmuring roof, lanced by shafts of light so pale as
to be almost silver. They gazed up, exalted, feeling their souls expand in the
opennessтАж
Until a four-foot body shot through a beam, laughing in delight while a half-grown