"Patricia C. Wrede - Lyra 02 - The Raven Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wrede Patricia C)

THE
RAVEN RING
A Lyra Novel
Patricia C Wrede




PROLOGUE


Spring in the Mountains of Morravik was about as predictable as a tired two-years child in a house
of wonders, or so it seemed to Gralith as he picked his way between patches of half-melted snow.
Today the sun was warm and bright, and he could hear birds singing and water rushing over rock;
tomorrow might bring a sky as gray as the stone beneath him, and snow on a bitter wind. He paused to
look around, then turned toward a clump of firs on the mountain's shoulder.

As he climbed, his steps grew slower. Not because of the slope; after two years in the mountains,
he had become used to long walks and steep ascents. The duty waiting at the end of his journey was the
burden that held him back.

He had never met the Salven family, but he had seen other Cilhar receive similar news, and he
could predict their reaction. No tears, no horrified denials, no wails of grief; only a short silence and a
white look about the lips of the husband or wife or child who offered ale and perhaps a little fruit to the
bearer of the unwelcome message. Gralith found that look harder to bear than weeping.

On the far side of the firs, he stopped again, peering about for the next landmark and hoping he
would recognize it for what it was when he saw it. He ought to be glad the Cilhar finally trusted him
enough to tell him the locations of their homes and the hidden routes to their doors, but he wished they
could be persuaded to write things down. A map would make visits such as this one so much easier! But
the only maps the Cilhar kept were large-scale ones, fine for tracing a route from Kith Alunel to Ciaron
or locating Morlang Isle, but useless for short local trips. He saw a boulder that fit the description he had
been given, and started toward it with a long-suffering sigh.

Ten minutes and two landmarks later, he came on the house at last. He saw it suddenly, almost as if
it had materialized by magic out of the mountainside while he was not attending. The cliff that sheltered it
curved around two sides, blending smoothly into the weathered gray boards. The Salvens probably had a
storeroom or two carved into the rock, Gralith thought. Then he blinked and looked at the house more
carefully, and his heart sank. The building stood on a stone ledge. Half a flight of wooden steps led up to
the door; there was no porch. The windows were narrow slits, and from where he stood to the foot of
the steps he could see no stone nor tree nor shrub large enough to provide shelter for a man. This family
kept to the old ways; his task was going to be worse than he had thought.

Gralith sighed. There was no point in putting it off. His boots made solid thudding noises against the
weathered boards of the steps as he climbed up to the door, and his knock echoed them.

To his surprise, the door opened almost at once. "You came! I didn't think you'd get here until
tomorrow or the day after, at the earliestтАФ" The speaker, a beautiful red-haired woman of perhaps
twenty, broke off when she saw Gralith. An eyeblink later a thick-bladed, sharp-looking knife appeared
in her hand. "Who are you?"