"Michelle West - The Memory of Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

always done, to allow it reign. His brief dalliance with insanity had given him no caus
regret that decision.
The pipe came, and he lit it carefully, inhaling bitter smoke. It was not to his taste, and
to his liking, and it would be less to his liking on the morrow when he woke to the tast
something dead and stale on his tongue. But the alternative was less appealing.
"Send them, then."
"Yes, Master."
 Hours passed. Of the many hundreds of hopeful applicants, Guildmaster Gilafas found
he was certain belonged within the guild walls. He treated them not only with the respe
their future rank, but with the affection reserved for kin, no matter how distant, who have f
their way home against almost insurmountable odds. It was not an act. There wa
brotherhood among the men and women who were, by nature of birth and some quirky, di
providence, driven to these strange acts of creation.
That brotherhood buoyed him, although he was not entirely certain that some part of
warmth was not caused by the contents of his pipe. It had been some hours since he had f
it, and he hesitated, hand over pouch, to do so again.
Looking up, he realized how costly that hesitation had been. He had never walked so c
to the edge without realizing it; somehow he had stepped across it.
Had he the voice for it, he would have cried out in fear or horror. It was the only thin
the long day that he would be grateful for later; his dignity was spared.
For the doors were there, they were open; the makers were in attendance; he was n
Fabril's hall, and the visions of that complicated, terrible place did not hold him in
painful grip.
Only memory did, but memory was enough, more than enough. He handed his pip
Sanfred, hands shaking so much he feared to drop it before it held what he required.
And he tried to smile at the young woman who walked toward him.
In the privacy of his thoughts, he was still a coward, had always been a coward; he
himself that he was mistaken, old, befuddled, that the voices of the ocean and the voices o
Maker had grown strong because he had done too little, these past few days, to still them
tried to tell himself that what he remembered could not be real.
But cowardice provided no shelter: he recognized the girl's face.
She had lain upon a bloodied altar in a hidden room that he had never tried to find again

When Cessaly saw the man who sat behind a table that was larger than any she had eve
seenтАФincluding Master Sivold's workbenchтАФshe froze.
"Cessaly," her mother said, impatient, fearful, angry.
But for once, her mother's voice was almost beneath her notice.
As if he were wood, or silver, or gold, the man caught the whole of her attention, dive
daylight, the vast rise of ceiling, the width and breadth of wall. Only the ocean's t
grew stronger as she met his eyes, and the inside of her mouth was dry as salt.
She should have remembered that when she approached wood, or gold, or silver,
approached first with ax, chisel, knife, fire; that the only voice allowed these things that wa
transformation was hers.
She said to him, before she could thinkтАФand this, too, was akin to her movements
wood, with silver, with goldтАФ"You make things."
It lacked manners, which would have been a crime in a different place; lacked them in
presence of a man of obvious import.
But it spoke to the heart of the matter.
"Yes," he said gravely. "I make things." His hand reached out, and out again, as if he w
touch her; it stopped inches short of her face, and fell.