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

And turned to stare at him, her eyes wide, her brows lost beneath the edge of poorly
hair. Honey eyes, he thought, a shade too brown to be the eyes of a child of the gods. "M
Gilafas?"
He shook his head, lifting a hand to clear his vision. "I hear the ocean," he told her bitt
"Only the ocean."
"Can you hear me?"
He stopped then, turned the full of his attention upon her, upon the question she had as
She was a child. By age, she could be counted among adults, but there was nothing of th
her expression; she was made of curiosity, insecurity, joy, and fear.
"Yes, Cessaly. I can hear you."

His answer was important. Because she could hear him. She could hear the ocean in his
voice, could see it in his eyes, her first glimpse of the blue surface against which sun scudd
She smiled, her hand against something soft and warm. "I can hear stone," she whispered. "
can hear wood growing. I can hear wind in the leaves, and the rain dance. I can hear the bir
seabirds, great birds. I can hear the sun's voice."
She had heard these things before, in the dells of Durant, in the furrows of her fat
fields, in the quiet of log and peat and moss yards from the river's edge, where the w
pooled before resuming its passage.
"I can hear silver," she told him. "And gold. And the voices of rubies and diamo
Sapphires are quiet." She stopped. She had never said so much before.
"But I hear the voices. There, past the door. Other voices."
"Open the door, then, Cessaly."
She started to. Started, and then stopped. She felt the cold in the cracks between stone.
voices she knew fell silent, one after the other; the cold remained, and she began to unders
that it had a voice of its own.
Death. Death there. The death of all things.
She drew back. Shook her head, although it was hard; all of her was shaking.
"Cessaly?"
Her hand fell away from the wall. "No," she told him sadly. "The cold will kill us."
turned to look at him, and she saw the shadows that the walls contained, straining for freed
for something that might have looked like flight to a person who had never seen birds. N
made them, inch by inch, never carved the length of their flight feathers, the stretch of
pinions.
It was dark now. The world was dark.
But Master Gilafas was still in it.

He caught her hand; it was blue.
"Come," he said gently. "We are not yet there, and there is no cold in Fabril's reach."
"Where is Fabril's reach?"
"Up," he told her gently. "Up these steps."
"I can't see them."
"No. Sometimes they are hard to see." The lights in the wall sockets were bright
steady; they had never failed, and he was certain they never would. Fabril had made
himself, had made this tower, the reach.
"Will you take me there?"
"Yes, Cessaly. Can you feel my hand?"
She appeared to be thinking, as if thought were her only vision. He waited.
"I can feel it."
"Good. You have never made hands," he said. "But when we arrive, I will bring you w