"Michelle West - Echoes" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

Echoes
by Michelle West

Michelle West is the author of a number of novels, including The Sacred Hunt duology and the
first four novels of The Sun Sword series: 7776 Broken Crown, The Uncrowned King, The
Shining Court, and Sea of Sorrows, all available from DAW Books. She reviews books for the
on-line column First Contacts, and less frequently for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction. Other short fiction by her appears in Black Cats and Broken Mirrors, Elf Magic,
Olympus, and Alien Abductions.

[Kallandras has appeared in every novel that Michelle West has written, but his past, while
acknowledged, has always been murky. There's never been much place to expand on it, until
now, and while this probably doesn't answer every question that's been asked about him, it's a
startтАж]

What does mercy mean?

Kallandras of Senniel College, the most famous bard that the most famous of bardic colleges had yet
produced, stirred beneath the growing chill of desert sky. The Sea of Sorrows lay before him, sand
dunes rippling out in endless ridges that seemed as solid as stone from a distance. But he knew that the
wind would reclaim them, as they did all else in the South.

Seiuuel College, and the life he had led there, was very far away, ensconced in the heart of the Imperial
Capital. The only physical evidence of his time there lay in her case, her strings still. He could not hear
music at all, although he listened for it.

Music was the one thing he had found that spoke to him almost as strongly as past voices; that found its
way beneath skin, beneath the serene face he presented to the world. But tonight it was absent. They
were strong tonight, the old voices.

And he knew why. But he held on to ignorance for as long as he couldтАФand despised himself for it, with
an intensity that spoke of the youth where most of the old voices had their roots. Ignorance served no
useful purpose; it changed no fact, it offered no shelter.

"Kallandras?"

He inclined his head in greeting as a figure resolved itself out of the shadows of distant wagons. The dyes
applied to his hair for his brief sojourn in the capital of the Dominion of Annagar had been of reasonably
quality; their temporary nature only now allowed the natural pale gold to peer through the brown-black
so common among the clans.

The Serra Teresa di'Marano stood beside him, the grace of her form encumbered by the heavier clothing
that the Voyani chose to wear during their forays into the Sea of Sorrows. Her eyes were dark, her hair
the color by nature that his was by artifice.

She did not touch him. She lifted a hand as if she would. It hovered like a moth between them, but in the
end, it was not drawn to fire.

She said, "I heard you speak."