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

She would glance anxiously at his face when the stones spoke in their sharp, cold voices.
Sometimes she would ask him about the voices.
And he would take her hands in his and smile gently. "Yes," he would say, "I hear t
But they are only words, Cessaly. Pay them no heed."
And she would see her death in these stones, but his words and his voice were stronger
 He was reduced, he thought, to being a baby-sitter.
He had, in that first month, attempted to foist that duty upon
Sanfred's broad shoulders, and Sanfred was more than willing to accept it.
But the greatness of the talent that all but consumed Cessaly was denied in its entire
Sanfred. He could not hear what she heard. He could not see what she saw. Instead, he h
madness, and only madness.
The stories were there, of course. Every apprentice, every young journeyman, every
who desired to be called MasterтАФ and there were not a few of those in the guildтАФknew
stories.
The Artisans were mad. Gloriously, dangerously, mad.
Only madness could conceive of a small jeweled box in which the whole of a room m
be contained. Only madness could create Fabril's reach, bending the fabric of the real and
solid to the vision of its maker. Only madness, yes.
But madness had created more, much more.
And Gilafas was doomed to understand it. To see what he could not be; to almost t
what he could not acheive. His curse.
Sanfred lost Cessaly for two days. He came to Gilafas, ashen and terrified, and all but
in a groveling heap at the Guild-master's feet, weeping. Two days, Gilafas searched; two d
he listened.
He found her at last in a room he had visited once in nightmare, standing before the e
of altar upon which her naked body lay, cradling rod and sword. What he found in searc
Cessaly, he was never allowed to lose again. It waited, that room.
He had carried her from it with care and difficulty; she had in her hands the softes
stones, and powder flew from it as she carved and polished its face, her eyes unseeing
ears bleeding.
Two days later, she had begged him for gold. He had brought that, and more besi
gemstones, large as eyes. She was thin as a bird; lifting her, he could believe that her b
were hollow. She said, "I'm flying, Master Gilafas. You've made me fly!" And laug
delirious. Insane.
He loved the sound of that laugh, and he understood, when he called Sanfred again,
Sanfred not only did not love it, but in fact, was terrified by it.
The fear galled Gilafas; the pity and horror that Sanfred could not hide when he next sa
Cessaly enraged him. He had not expected that. Had he, he might have been more temperate
More cautious.
"Do you not understand what you have witnessed?"
Sanfred was mute in the face of his words.
"The guild has not been graced by a talent as pure as hers since its founding. Do
not understand the significance of her presence?"
An ill display indeed, for he knew the answer. No. How could he?
"You . . . are not . . . as she is."
"No, Sanfred, I am not. To my profound sorrow, I am not. Get out. Get out; I will tend
myself."
 He was her captive. He came to understand that. The whole of his life, his authority,
stature meant nothing to her. And where was the justice in that? For his life revo
around her. The hours of his rising, the hours in which he might sleep, were dictated by