"Tad Williams - The Burning Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

Years and years later, I still start in the deepest part of night with his agonized face
before me. And always, in these helpless dreams, I am helpless to ease his suffering.
I will tell the tale then, in hope the last ghosts may be put to rest, if such a thing can ever
happen in this place where there are more ghosts than living souls. But you will have to listen
closely - this is a tale that the teller herself does not fully understand.
I will tell you of Lord Sulis, my famous stepfather.
I will tell you what the witch foretold to me.
I will tell you of the love that I had and I lost.
I will tell you of the night I saw the burning man.

Tellarin gifted me with small things, but they were not small to me. My lover brought me
sweetmeats, and laughed to see me eat them so greedily.
'Ah, little Breda,' he told me. 'It is strange and wonderful that a mere soldier should have to
smuggle honeyed figs to a king's daughter. And then he kissed me, put his rough face against me
and kissed me and that was a sweeter thing than any fig that God ever made.
But Sulis was not truly a king, nor was I his true daughter.
Tellarin was not wrong about everything. The gladness I felt when I saw my soldier or heard him
whistling below the window was strange and wonderful indeed.

My true father, the man from whose loins I sprang, died in the cold waters of the Kingslake when I
was very small. His companions said that a great pikefish became caught in the nets and dragged my
father Ricwald to a drowning death, but others whispered that it was his companions themselves who
murdered him, then weighted his body with stones. Everyone knew that my father would have been
gifted with the standard and spear of Great Thane when all the thanes of the Lake People next met.
His father and uncle had both been Great Thane before him, so some whispered that God had struck
down my poor father because one family should not hold power so long. Others believed that my
father's companions on the boat had simply been paid shame-gold to drown him, to satisfy the
ambition of one of the other families.
I know these things only from my mother Cynethrith's stories. She was young when my father died,
and had two small children - me, not yet five years old, and my brother Aelfric, two years my
elder. Together we went to live in the house of my father's father because we were the last of his
line, and among the Lake People of Erkynland it was blood of high renown. But it was not a happy
house. Godric, my grandfather, had himself been Great Thane for twice ten years before illness
ended his rule, and he had high hopes that my father would follow him, but after my father died,
Godric had to watch a man from one of the other families chosen to carry the spear and standard
instead. From that moment, everything that happened in the world only seemed to prove to my
grandfather that the best days of Erkynland and the Lake People had passed.
Godric died before I reached seven years, but he made those years between my father's death and
his own very unhappy ones for my mother, with many complaints and sharp rebukes at how she managed
the household and how she raised Aelfric and me, his dead son's only children. My grandfather
spent much time with Aelfric, trying to make him the kind of man who would bring the spear and
standard back to our family, but my brother was small and timid - it must have been clear he would
never rule more than his own household. This Godric blamed on my mother, saying she had taught the
boy womanish ways.
Grandfather was less interested in me. He was never cruel to me, only fierce and short-spoken, but
he was such a frightening figure, with bristling white beard, growling voice, and several missing
fingers, that I could never do anything but shrink from him. If that was another reason he found
little savour in life, then I am sorry for it now.
In any case, my mother's widowhood was a sad, bitter time for her. From mistress of her own house,
and prospective wife of the Great Thane, she now became only one of three grown daughters in the