"West,.Michelle.-.Memory.of.Stone.(txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

"Very well, Guildmaster. King Reymalyn has sent me with a message."
"And that?"
"The Sword," he said softly, "was drawn this morning."
Heart's blow. He lifted a feeble hand to ward it, but it was far too late.
"I confess that I could not read what was writ in the runnels, although the words were clear to me. King Reymalyn labored under no such handicap."
"The sword was forged by Fabril," Gilafas said, the words leeched of the pride that once might have lodged within them. "If I was to guess, I would say that no one but the King ReymalynЧ with the possible exception of the King CormalynЧmight read what is written there."
"You are correct."
"Why have you come?"
"If you must play at ignorance, I will indulge you. I cameЧ"
"Gilafas, look!"
Cessaly had run from the room's corner, her eyes bright. She reached out and caught his apron, tugging at it insistently. "Come, look, look!"
He followed her, aware that he risked Duvari's wrath. Like a shadow, the Astari followed, dogging his steps. Gilafas, mindful of this, pried her fingers free, replacing cloth with the palm of gloveless hand.
In the circular globe, the butterfly hovered, wings flapping. They brushed the concave sides of the glass, and the glass trembled in response.
Duvari said quietly, as if there had been no interruption, "The Sword must be reforged, the Rod remade. They were meant to stand against the Barons; they were not created to stand against the darkness."
"Then you are doomed," he said, but without hope, "for the man who made those emblems of the Kings' power is long dead."
"Indeed. But it is not by his hands that they must be remade."
Gilafas stiffened. He was surprised, but he shouldn't have been. The Lord of the Compact, it seemed, made all secrets, all hidden histories, his business. "I had thought it might be by yours, Guildmaster." He bowed, and when he rose from the bow, his face was as smooth as the surface of the glass that now contained the floating butterfly.
Gilafas had a moment of clarity, then, standing before the most feared man in the Empire. He saw the pity in Duvari's face; the pity and the ruthlessness.
"It is trapped," Duvari said, speaking for the first time to Cessaly.
"Oh, no," she said, eyes round, face serious. "It is safe." And then she frowned. "I have something for you," she told him. "Can you wait here?"
He nodded gently. He, who had never done a gentle thing in his life.
Cessaly floated from the room, bouncing and skittering around the benches, her arms flapping.
"Understand," Duvari said quietly, when she had vanished, "that the Kings have no choice in this. The darkness has risen, and it is gathering. The Kings cannot go unarmed into that battle, and they will go."
"She is a child," Gilafas replied.
"She is an Artisan, and if I understand the hidden histories well enough, she is the Artisan for whom Fabril built the reach. What she needs to learn, she must learn here, and she must learn it quickly."
The Guildmaster closed his eyes.
"Because if I am not mistaken, she will not survive long."
"She is not the power that Fabril was."
"She does not have his knowledge," Duvari replied, "nor the allies with whom he worked so long and so secretly. But the power?" Again, something akin to pity distorted his features. "Affection is a dangerous burden, Guildmaster. We go, in the end, to war, and the chance of victory is so slight we can afford to spare nothing."
"It is not in my hands," he said stiffly.
That was his truth. It was not, it had never been in his hands.
"Is it not?"
She came then, before he could frame an answer, and her hands, so often spread wide to touch the surfaces of the world around her, were clenched in loose fists. Sunlight caught the edges of gold, the brilliant flash of diamond.
She walked up to Duvari without even a trace of her usual caution. "These are for you," she told him gravely.
"Forme?"
"Well, maybe for the Kings."
He held out his palms very slowly, as if she were a wild creature. She placed in them two pendants. They were eagles, the guildmaster thought, wings spread in flight, flight feathers trailing light. At their heart, large as cat's eyes, sapphires. To Gilafas' eyes, they glowed.
"These will help," she told him quietly. "With the shadows."
"The shadows, Cessaly?"
She nodded. "We have them here, and I don't like them. I made one for me, too. When I wear it, I don't hear shadow voices. Only the other ones. The stones," she added, by way of explanation. "The wood, and the goldЧthe sapphires are quiet, but you need the quietЧand Master Gilafas."
"You hear the shadows here?"
"Don't ask her that!" Gilafas cried out.
But her face had turned, from Duvari, from him. Skin pale, her eyes darted along the workroom's walls. Here, the voices of nightmare were weakest; this was Gilafas' space.
But the nightmares had been growing stronger; there was now not a single moment in which she could safely be left alone without some sort of work in her hands. She jerked twice, as if struck, and then turned and fled the room.
Gilafas, prepared in some fashion for these episodes, ran to the workbench and swept up the satchel in which the most portable of her tools were contained.
"Guildmaster," Duvari began.
"Not now, Duvari."
He did not expect argument; he did not receive it. But he was angry enough that he could not stop himself from speaking as he strode to the door. "If I have lost her again, you will pay. One day, she will go someplace where she cannot be found; she will be beyond us, working until she starves. If that day is today, I swear to youЧand to the Kings you protectЧthat the Guild of the Makers will never again serve at your command."
He did not wait for the reply.
And perhaps he would have been surprised to know that none was made.