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

She should have remembered that when she approached wood, or gold, or silver, she approached first with ax, chisel, knife, fire; that the only voice allowed these things that waited transformation was hers.
She said to him, before she could thinkЧand this, too, was akin to her movements with wood, with silver, with goldЧ"You make things."
It lacked manners, which would have been a crime in a different place; lacked them in the presence of a man of obvious import.
But it spoke to the heart of the matter.
"Yes," he said gravely. "I make things." His hand reached out, and out again, as if he would touch her; it stopped inches short of her face, and fell.
She had seen glass in windows, although her family's home had had none until the third year of her work with Master Sivold, and she understood that the one that stood between them now was closed.

You make things.
"Yes. Yes, I make things."
She lifted a hand.
"I do, too."
He would never hear the ocean again, not as he had. A man's mind had room for only so much madness, and Gilafas' less than any Artisan before him.
"Sanfred," he said, rising, pipe somehow no longer a danger.
"Master Gilafas?"
"I am done for the day. This girl is maker-born; ask herЧmother?Чfor the information we require, draw up those forms that you deem necessary, do what needs be done." He rose. Picked up the box he had ordered carried to this table with such care.
"This was once yours," he said.
She looked at it, and her expression twisted. "It was never mine," she told him solemnly. "I made it for Master Sivold." She frowned when she said it, and her face lost some of its luster, some of its terrible lure. "Are you upset about it, too?"
He nodded. Before he could catch himselfЧif he would ever be able to catch himselfЧhis chin fell and rose in a sharp, jerky dip. "But for a different reason. I have not seen the inside of the box. I could not open it."
"Would you like me to open it for you?"
"If you would."
She took the box carefully, placing the left palm firmly beneath the center of its flat, legless bottom. And when she opened it, Sanfred understood what Gilafas had not yet said, because he was standing just to his right, and he was human enough to be curious.
The inside of the box itself was longer than the table at which the Makers now sat; it was as deep as a man's arm from palm to shoulder.
"He needed more room," she told him gravely, "for the things that I made. Will you give it back to him?"
"Yes," he told her gently. He knew how important the answer was; she was maker-born, after all.

It took some hours to settle not the girl, but her mother. She would not leave without speaking to the GuildmasterЧa sure sign of her ignorance of the workings of the Guild of Makers.
Therefore, Gilafas, exhausted and on the edge of compulsion, drove himself for a second time from the confines of his quarters in Fabril's reach. Sanfred was nowhere to be seen; neither was the girl, although he had been quite specific.
It was only when he reached the visitor's lounge that he realized that hours had not, in fact, passed; the sun was wrong for itЧit was still in the sky. He steadied himself against this dislocation as Sanfred appeared. Sanfred who could hide mortal concern behind a placid, workman's expression.
He sat in front of this dour woman, and she beside an older, dourer one. They formed the sides of a triangle; Sanfred, attending, was simple shadow, and moved like a trick of the light.
Master Gilafas had only one desire when confronted with this woman, and it was strong, terrible, as visceral as any need to make, or make again, had ever been.
Take your girl, take her as far away from this place as you can, and still live. Go North, to the barbarians; go South to the slavery of the Southern Courts; go West, to the kingdoms of which I know so little. Leave her anywhere but here.
But he did not.
"Will you take care of her?" the woman asked. She was fidgeting now.
"I assure you, there is not another place in all of the Empire where she will beЧ"
"Because she's always been a bit odd." The woman, having said the words, lost half a foot of height. Her hair, dark with streaks of gray, seemed to frame a face too pale to carry it. "She's more than a bit odd now. We're her kin, we know what she means when she speaks; we know there's no harm in her wild ways. She's a good girl. She's an honest girl."
He started to speak, but she had not yet finished.
"She won't thieve, mind, not for herself. But she takes a fancy to things she seesЧbits of wood or stone, mostlyЧand she'll pick 'em up."
"We understand that, here."
"And she'll work funny hours, if you don't stop her. It's hard, but she needs to eat." Care had worn lines deeply into the material of her face. "Don't forget it: she needs to eat. And drink. And sleep. She's got to be reminded; we let her work once, thinking she would stop in her own time. Waited to see how long that was." Hands were clenched now.
He stared at her. To his surprise, he wanted to offer her comfort. "She will be treasured here in a way that you cannot envision. Sanfred, the man who is hovering, was trained to do two things: he is a painter, here, one of a very few. And he is a ... baby-sitter. We all work the hours that your child would work, unminded. And we have learned to watch out for each other. She will not go hungry; she will not go thirsty. Sleep is harder to dictate."
She wasn't satisfied. He could see it.
He said simply, "There are things that she is beginning to learn that she should not learn on her own. The boxЧyou saw itЧis only the first sign of that. There are others things she might have made. In our histories, a boy much her age walked into the blacksmith's forge shortly after a bandit raid. The raids that year were fierce and terrible, for most of the land had seen little rain, and the fields would not take.
"He made a sword. It killed. That was all it did. It was his rage and his desire; he wielded it. It sang. He carried it to the bandit's home, and he had his revenge, and it was bright and bloody.
"But he had had no sword skills, and he was not a large lad; the sword itself contained both the desire to kill and the ability. In the end, the bandits themselves were not enough to slake its thirst, and he wandered into the village he had loved. Hundreds perished before the sheath that would hold that sword was created."
She was pale, now, pale as light on his beloved ocean. But she asked, simply, "What happened to the boy?"
A mother's question.
"He was mad," he replied. "And he remained so."
"They didn't kill him?"
He hesitated. "No," he said at last, and gently, "they did not kill him. They gave him, instead, to our keeping."
Before she could speak, he raised a hand. "And in our keeping, in the safety of these walls, or in the stewardship of those best suited to such a task, he made such things as Kings wield, and his work helped to change the face of the lands we now call the Empire. He was honored, he was revered. In his fashion, he was loved."