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

They kept her until the harvest's end, and then they traveled east, east to the Empire of Essalieyan. Her father and mother had argued three daysЧand nights, tucked in the battleground of their bed, their voices loud and rumbling, their words muted by log wallsЧand in the end, her mother had won, as she often did. Her brothers were to stay; she was to travel with the caravan until she reached the city, and from there she was to seek the Guild of the Makers.
"ButЧbut, DaЧ"
"It's your mother's decision, not mine. I don't send my kin toЧ"
"Father," her mother had said, clipping both ends of the words between tight teeth.
Cessaly wanted to be happy. Or she wanted him to be happy. She wasn't sure. "But if I'm a makerЧwe'll be rich. We'll be rich, Da."
"You'll be rich," he said gruffly. "And we'll be farmers, here, in Durant."
"I don't have to live there."
He looked at his wife. His wife said nothing.
She did what any sensible girl would do. She went in search of Dell. Bryan was older, and minded his father's commands.
"Dell?"
"Aye, Cessaly."
"Why can't I live here?"
"They think you're maker-born," he said.
"But all of the makers don't live in the Empire."
"No."
"Then why do I have to?"
"Because you made that damn box, is why."
She wanted to tell him to burn the box, then, but she couldn't quite say the words. Wasn't certain why. "I did bad?"
"You did too good," he told her, when he heard the tone of her voice. "And now they're all afeared. Master SivoldЧ"
"What?"
He shook his head. "It's nothing. They think you'll go crazy, Cessaly."
"Then why are they sending me?"
He shrugged. "Because all the crazy people live in the Empire?"
So she hit him. Lots. He wasn't supposed to hit her back.

The crowds wavered like a heat mirage in Gilafas' vision. The great doors had been rolled back, and light skittered off the sheen of marble and brass, abjuring its smoky green, its black, its curling grays. Beyond the open doors, the grapple of a thousand people moved and twisted like the ocean's voice; he could make out no words because he could hear them all so clearly.
"Master Gilafas?"
He lifted a hand. "I thinkЧI think, Sanfred, that I will have my pipe. Now."
"YourЧah. That one. Yes, Guildmaster." He hesitated for just a moment, and then he waved another maker over and relinquished his grip on Gilafas' elbow, forgotten until that moment.
Everyone hovered. It was annoying. Their shadows against the floor, the fall of their feet, the drifting haze of their cloudy beards, made him think of the storm. He waved them away. Ocean voice, he thought. What am I to do today? It is not the time.
Sanity. That was his curse. He listened to confusion dispassionately, refusing, as he had always done, to allow it reign. His brief dalliance with insanity had given him no cause to regret that decision.
The pipe came, and he lit it carefully, inhaling bitter smoke. It was not to his taste, and not to his liking, and it would be less to his liking on the morrow when he woke to the taste of something dead and stale on his tongue. But the alternative was less appealing.
"Send them, then."
"Yes, Master."

Hours passed. Of the many hundreds of hopeful applicants, Guildmaster Gilafas found two he was certain belonged within the guild walls. He treated them not only with the respect of their future rank, but with the affection reserved for kin, no matter how distant, who have found their way home against almost insurmountable odds. It was not an act. There was a brotherhood among the men and women who were, by nature of birth and some quirky, divine providence, driven to these strange acts of creation.
That brotherhood buoyed him, although he was not entirely certain that some part of that warmth was not caused by the contents of his pipe. It had been some hours since he had filled it, and he hesitated, hand over pouch, to do so again.
Looking up, he realized how costly that hesitation had been. He had never walked so close to the edge without realizing it; somehow he had stepped across it.
Had he the voice for it, he would have cried out in fear or horror. It was the only thing in the long day that he would be grateful for later; his dignity was spared.
For the doors were there, they were open; the makers were in attendance; he was not in Fabril's hall, and the visions of that complicated, terrible place did not hold him in their painful grip.
Only memory did, but memory was enough, more than enough. He handed his pipe to Sanfred, hands shaking so much he feared to drop it before it held what he required.
And he tried to smile at the young woman who walked toward him.
In the privacy of his thoughts, he was still a coward, had always been a coward; he told himself that he was mistaken, old, befuddled, that the voices of the ocean and the voices of the Maker had grown strong because he had done too little, these past few days, to still them. He tried to tell himself that what he remembered could not be real.
But cowardice provided no shelter: he recognized the girl's face.
She had lain upon a bloodied altar in a hidden room that he had never tried to find again.

When Cessaly saw the man who sat behind a table that was larger than any she had ever seenЧincluding Master Sivold's workbenchЧshe froze.
"Cessaly," her mother said, impatient, fearful, angry.
But for once, her mother's voice was almost beneath her notice.
As if he were wood, or silver, or gold, the man caught the whole of her attention, diverting daylight, the vast rise of ceiling, the width and breadth of wall. Only the ocean's taste grew stronger as she met his eyes, and the inside of her mouth was dry as salt.