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

She closed her eyes. Opened them. "I can't take her home," she said, the statement a question.
"No."
She rose then. "Let me say my good-byes, and I'll not trouble you further."
But she would. He could see it in the lines of her face, the depth of her concern. She would go home, to Durant, and the fate of her daughter would draw her out, again and again, to this vast, intimidating place. She would see a stranger in this daughter, and the daughterЧhe was not certain what the daughter would see.
Because he was sane. Because he had always been blind, that way. He rose and offered the woman his hand; she accepted it as if it were an anchor on a short chain.

To be a failure was something Gilafas had contemplated for the better part of his adult life. But he had contemplated it in the temple makers made of quarters an accident of birth had granted him. To do penance for his failure, he had strengthened the Guild of the Makers immeasurably, giving it the steady guidance that a madman could never have conceived of. This he did for the old man whose joy he had not the strength to live up to.
If he could not increase the mystery of the guild, if he could not add to the grandeur of its legends, he could at least do that.
And he had thought himself an honest man, had thought acceptance of his paltry ability had been his for the better part of a decade.
Now, it was unbearable.
The girlЧCessalyЧhad been moved to Fabril's reach the moment her mother had left. He might have assigned the duty of settling her to Sanfred, or another of the makers who served him directly, but cowardice prevented it, presenting him with the first of many menial tasks he was to adopt.
Because Sanfred could not fail to see in the girl what Gilafas himself lacked. How could he?
So it was that Guildmaster Gilafas ADelios led her to the winding tower stairs that led to Fabril's reach.
She had taken the steps timidly at first, her hands faltering upon the fine rails beneath the grand sweep of open tower, the fading light. She had no experience of this world, save in storyЧif thatЧ and her fear made her precious to him, for he had no children.
But the fear itself was fleeting.
The light in her eyes was not; it was fire, of a sort, the fire of a forge, the fire of one maker-born who sees into the world of mages. Or gods. He could not himself say, although he had walked that path.
But he knew the moment that she lost fear to wonder; he could see it in her. Could hear it, in the whisper of moving strands of her hair, taken by a breeze that did notЧand had neverЧtouched him.
She carved birds; he remembered that the grandmother had mentioned it to Sanfred. Birds, butterflies, creatures not bound to the earth. And he? He worked water, and whales, dolphins, things of the deep that might break the bounds of their element in fleeting steps, with will and joy.
So she flew. Up, up, and up. She knew where the doors were. Were she not small, were her step not contained by the reach of short legs, she might have evaded him utterly. He could not let her do it. He could not let her make herself at home in Fabril's reach.
Was ashamed of the inability.
We are not judged by what we create; we create. Maker's motto. And what use that motto now? It was a lie.
Vanity had its use.
Cessaly stopped two thirds of the way up the stairs and placed her hand gently upon the wall. A recess in the smooth stone caught the shape of her palm, molding itself to her fingers as if the stone were liquid.
He heard the ocean's voice then. A roar, a roar of water breaking stone and wood, rending cloth, burying men. She opened a door that he had never found.
And turned to stare at him, her eyes wide, her brows lost beneath the edge of poorly cut hair. Honey eyes, he thought, a shade too brown to be the eyes of a child of the gods. "Master Gilafas?"
He shook his head, lifting a hand to clear his vision. "I hear the ocean," he told her bitterly. "Only the ocean."
"Can you hear me?"
He stopped then, turned the full of his attention upon her, upon the question she had asked. She was a child. By age, she could be counted among adults, but there was nothing of that in her expression; she was made of curiosity, insecurity, joy, and fear.
"Yes, Cessaly. I can hear you."

His answer was important. Because she could hear him. She could hear the ocean in his voice, could see it in his eyes, her first glimpse of the blue surface against which sun scudded. She smiled, her hand against something soft and warm. "I can hear stone," she whispered. "I can hear wood growing. I can hear wind in the leaves, and the rain dance. I can hear the birds, seabirds, great birds. I can hear the sun's voice."
She had heard these things before, in the dells of Durant, in the furrows of her father's fields, in the quiet of log and peat and moss yards from the river's edge, where the water pooled before resuming its passage.
"I can hear silver," she told him. "And gold. And the voices of rubies and diamonds. Sapphires are quiet." She stopped. She had never said so much before.
"But I hear the voices. There, past the door. Other voices."
"Open the door, then, Cessaly."
She started to. Started, and then stopped. She felt the cold in the cracks between stone. The voices she knew fell silent, one after the other; the cold remained, and she began to understand that it had a voice of its own.
Death. Death there. The death of all things.
She drew back. Shook her head, although it was hard; all of her was shaking.
"Cessaly?"
Her hand fell away from the wall. "No," she told him sadly. "The cold will kill us." She turned to look at him, and she saw the shadows that the walls contained, straining for freedom, for something that might have looked like flight to a person who had never seen birds. Never made them, inch by inch, never carved the length of their flight feathers, the stretch of their pinions.
It was dark now. The world was dark.
But Master Gilafas was still in it.

He caught her hand; it was blue.
"Come," he said gently. "We are not yet there, and there is no cold in Fabril's reach."
"Where is Fabril's reach?"
"Up," he told her gently. "Up these steps."
"I can't see them."
"No. Sometimes they are hard to see." The lights in the wall sockets were bright and steady; they had never failed, and he was certain they never would. Fabril had made them himself, had made this tower, the reach.
"Will you take me there?"