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

"Done."

To find sunlight again was a blessing. Master Gilafas paused at the foot of the steps and bowed. Sanfred was at his side before his stiff spine had once again straightened. He felt the younger man's solid hand in the crook of his elbow, and was grateful for it: the memories of that early passage through Fabril's reach had teeth, fangs, gravity. To struggle free of them today was almost more than he was capable of.
Once, that would have pleased him. And perhaps, if he were honest, it pleased him in some fashion today. But triumph gave way to horror, and horror sent him scuttling away like insect evading boot.
He cleared his throat. "The applicants?" "Waiting, Guildmaster."
"Good."
Sanfred had never once asked him why he had chosen to oversee this testing. No one had.
By unspoken consent, the makers, fractious as only the creative can be, granted him the privacy of their admiration. What he could makeЧin theoryЧno one among them could ever hope to make.
A mage could, he thought, irritable. A mage of lesser talent and no ambition. But he had too great a love for his authority to speak the words aloud.
"Take me."
"Yes, Master."
"And bring the box on that desk. I do not need to remind you to handle it with care."

After that day, Cessaly's size was no longer a problem. Her father spent some part of the summer building a small addition to his barn, and he placed her tools, her paints, the pieces of wood that he found for her use, beneath its flat roof. He had no money for glass, but the doors themselves opened toward the sun's light, and Cessaly worked from the moment it crossed the threshold of the room, ceasing when it faded.
The merchant returned three times in the year, bringing different tools, different materials, different paints. He asked if she had ever seen metal worked, and when she shook her head, he offered to take her to a jeweler in the largest of the Free Towns. It was an offer that was flatly rejected by both her father and her mother.
They were very surprised when, two years later, that jeweler made the trek at the merchant's side when the caravan returned.
"This had better not be a waste of my time," he said curtly to the merchant.
"I'm paying for your time," the merchant had replied, with a very small smile. "But I know my business."
"Where is your young paragon of creativity, Gerrald?"
"In front of you."
"What, this girl?"
"The very one."
The jeweler frowned. He was balding, and the dome of his skull seemed to glow. "How old are you, child?"
"Twelve."
The frown deepened. "Twelve. And you've never apprenticed to anyone?"
She shook her head.
"Well. I'm not sure that I can offer you such a positionЧI've heard that your parents won't hear of you traveling, and this
town is not my home. But Gerrald has offered me much money to teach you for the summer, and I admit that the offer itself is unusual enough to have piqued my curiosity. If you are willing, I would teach you some small amount of my craft."
He brought with him gold and silver, sparkling gems and glossy pearls, opals and ebony, a small dragon's hoard.
But he brought something better, something infinitely more alluring: fire. Fire, in the heart of the rooms her father had built.
She had waited for her father's permission, and her father had granted it.

The man in robes came again, three times, the water jug heavy in his hands. She watched his shadow against the cobbled stones, and her hands ached. Her grandmother's hands ached as wellЧ but she blamed that ache on the ocean Cessaly could taste when her tongue touched her lips.
Cessaly had not yet seen the ocean; she had seen buildings, horses, and streets that went on for as far as the eye could see. There were white birds in the air above, birds with angry, raucous cries; there were insects beneath her feet among mice and rats; there were cats sleek and slender, and dogs of all shapes, all sizes.
There was no workshop; she had been forbidden all of her tools. When traveling along the road, she had been permitted to idly carve the pieces of wood she had taken from the farm; they were gone now.
She wanted them.
There was no dirt beneath her feet; there were stones, smooth and flat, longer than she was and at least three times as wide. There were fences, too, things of black iron or bronze. Nothing that she could work with.
She plaited her hair instead, until her mother caught her at it, and grabbed both her hands, stilling them.
"Not here," she had said severely. "Not here."
Her hands began to ache; her eyes began to burn. She could not wait forever.
The jeweler stayed in Durant for four years. He bought a house for himself, very near the common; he built his workshop, sent for his apprentices, and brought his business to the town. He also made a room for Cessaly, and her mother brought her to it, and took her from it, every day except for the Mother's day.
Cessaly worked with gold, with silver, with platinum. She handled his diamonds, his emeralds, his rubies, the blinking eyes of curved sapphires, the crisp edges of amethyst and firestone. He had begun by telling her what he wished her to achieve, and had ended, quickly, by simply giving her material to work with.
He often watched as she worked; often worked by her side, making the settings upon which he might place the results of her labor. He was not a man who was given to praise, and indeed, he offered little of itЧbut his silence was like a song, and his expression in the frame of that silence, a gift. Cessaly liked him.
And because of that, she decided that she would make something for him. Not for the merchant to whom all of her work eventually went, but for Master Sivold himself.
Because she wished the gift to be entirely hers, she chose wood to work with; wood was something that she could easily afford on her own. The merchants came in the spring, and when they did, she asked if they might bring her something suitable. But she did not ask for soft wood; did not choose the oak that came from the forests a few miles outside of the village. She requested instead a red, hard wood, something riven from the heart of a giant tree.
She was so excited when the merchant placed it in her hands; she was absorbed by the tang of wood, its rough grain, the depth of its unstained color. She wanted to rush back to the workshop, to begin to work right away.
But she heard its voice, wood's voice, and it bade her wait. Voice? No, not voice, for the words it spoke were not quite words, and the wood offered her no more than that; she could not speak to it, could ask it no question and receive no answer of use. But she could feel it in the palms of her hands as if it were a living heart; could see it move, shrinking in size until the truth of its shape was revealed. She waited.
Four days later, at the height of summer, during the longest day of the year, she began to carve. To cut. To burn. She worked until the sun had begun to touch the colors of the sky; worked until the first of the stars was bright.
And when she was finished, she saw that her mother was asleep in the great chair in the corner; that the lamp had been lit and rested on the table beside that chair; that the workshop itself was empty.
She was very, very tired, but she tucked the box away, hiding it beneath the heavy cloths that protected the gems and the metals from sawdust and insects. Then she woke her mother and together they went home.