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

go home, to Durant, and the fate of her daughter would draw her out, again and again, to
vast, intimidating place. She would see a stranger in this daughter, and the daughterтАФhe
not certain what the daughter would see.
Because he was sane. Because he had always been blind, that way. He rose and offered
woman his hand; she accepted it as if it were an anchor on a short chain.

To be a failure was something Gilafas had contemplated for the better part of his adult
But he had contemplated it in the temple makers made of quarters an accident of birth
granted him. To do penance for his failure, he had strengthened the Guild of the Ma
immeasurably, giving it the steady guidance that a madman could never have conceived
This he did for the old man whose joy he had not the strength to live up to.
If he could not increase the mystery of the guild, if he could not add to the grandeur o
legends, he could at least do that.
And he had thought himself an honest man, had thought acceptance of his paltry ability
been his for the better part of a decade.
Now, it was unbearable.
The girlтАФCessalyтАФhad been moved to Fabril's reach the moment her mother had left
might have assigned the duty of settling her to Sanfred, or another of the makers who se
him directly, but cowardice prevented it, presenting him with the first of many menial task
was to adopt.
Because Sanfred could not fail to see in the girl what Gilafas himself lacked. How c
he?
So it was that Guildmaster Gilafas ADelios led her to the winding tower stairs that le
Fabril's reach.
She had taken the steps timidly at first, her hands faltering upon the fine rails beneath
grand sweep of open tower, the fading light. She had no experience of this world, sav
storyтАФif thatтАФ and her fear made her precious to him, for he had no children.
But the fear itself was fleeting.
The light in her eyes was not; it was fire, of a sort, the fire of a forge, the fire of
maker-born who sees into the world of mages. Or gods. He could not himself say, althoug
had walked that path.
 But he knew the moment that she lost fear to wonder; he could see it in her. Could he
in the whisper of moving strands of her hair, taken by a breeze that did notтАФand
neverтАФtouched him.
She carved birds; he remembered that the grandmother had mentioned it to Sanfred. B
butterflies, creatures not bound to the earth. And he? He worked water, and whales, dolp
things of the deep that might break the bounds of their element in fleeting steps, with will
joy.
So she flew. Up, up, and up. She knew where the doors were. Were she not small, were
step not contained by the reach of short legs, she might have evaded him utterly. He could
let her do it. He could not let her make herself at home in Fabril's reach.
Was ashamed of the inability.
We are not judged by what we create; we create. Maker's motto. And what use that m
now? It was a lie.
Vanity had its use.
Cessaly stopped two thirds of the way up the stairs and placed her hand gently upon
wall. A recess in the smooth stone caught the shape of her palm, molding itself to her finge
if the stone were liquid.
He heard the ocean's voice then. A roar, a roar of water breaking stone and wood, ren
cloth, burying men. She opened a door that he had never found.