"Zimmer,.Paul.Edwin.-.Ingulf.The.MadUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zimmer Paul Edwin)

"He is a beast!" she said. "He hunted me! He stabbed his spear in me, as though I were an animal, and hurt me! Now he dares to hunt me again, this death-bound man! I am still an animal to him!" And she turned away, and fled.
Fiarril stared after her, fingering his harp. There was
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something strange in her voice; he felt her words did not reveal her mind. Surely she could at least speak to the man!
Fiarrirs mind was deep, and kindly, but he knew little of Mortal Men. He had heard that they could be more easily moved or bound by spells than could the Elves. But it had taken strong spells to draw the man back from the sea. . . .
Time would make all clear, but time the mortal did not have. He thought of things he had seen in Ingulfs mind. Surely in time Airellen might be brought to take pity on the manЧbut would the mortal live that long?
Not if he kept walking into the ocean with no sea-magic about him! And if the man had to watch his life slipping away, and no words for him from Airellen, then surely the despair would be upon him again. . . .
Fiarril tried to imagine what it would be like, to know that the fleeting days and hours were stripping his life away, and his strength and health with it. He shuddered.
Perhaps he should cast the mortal into a sleep, until at last the girl would be willing to talk to himЧbut sleep-spells were chancy things, sometimes, and besides, Airellen would be easier to persuade if the man were up and wandering about.
But his awareness of time could be taken from him. If it seemed to him that only the one night was passing, then he would not suffer as the days and months went by.
Ingulf came down to the streets again. Elves stared at him. There was a lump of ice in the bottom of his heart, but the madness that had held him had passed, and he could hear the moan of the surf without longing to lie down and vanish in the deep salt pools.
She did not love him. That was the terrible thing he had to faceЧand could not face! But hope was in him once again; hope that he could make her see mat he was not a worthless man. But he'd not made a good beginning.
Elf-folk watched him warily, with glittering eyes. No doubt they thought him a madman. Indeed, he'd acted the madman: down their streets he'd galloped his horse at full speed. . . .
A harp was playing. A tall Sea-Elf stood before him, with a long beard swaying like seaweed in the salty wind. Ingulf had
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never before seen a bearded Elf, and looked at him closely, wondering if this were a man, or a being of some strange race unknown to him. The hair of the beard was as fine and soft as a child's hair, or a maiden's, and golden like old honey; the face beneath the beard was like a frail-boned young girl's face, and the eyes were huge and ageless. Long fragile fingers opened and closed on the harpstrings.
For a long time the wide eyes looked at him in silence, and when at last the Elf spokeЧor did he sing?Чhis voice was gentle and soft as the dawn call of some forest bird.
"It is from far away that Ingulf the great swordsman has come among us," the Elf's voice came. But did he speak or did he sing? Ingulf could not tell. "Ingulf the Wanderer out of far eastern isles, famed in the service of mortal kings." Fingers on harpstrings flickered, and tiny chiming notes rippled and rang above the booming echoes of the waves. "Come to us across the weary miles, to rest from the trials of his journey-ings. ..."
Music wrapped around Ingulf, as the voice shifted between speech and song. The music grew swift and wild, and he found himself dancing, Elf-folk merry about him, whirling gaily through the white stone streets, while something clawed at his heart.
He did not see the Twin Suns when they rose. His long night had begun. When the dancing ended, they brought him wine and bread. Elf-women gathered about him, and many a sweet thing said, and he ate as he had danced, scarce knowing what he did: for the center of his life was gone from him, and the world was hollow.
He wandered the white stone streets, lost in a mist of spells, and sunlight was moonlight to him.
Waves throbbed on the shore. Sea-Elves danced and sang old songs. But Airellen kept her eyes turned from the lanky figure that haunted her.
He moved among the Elves, not taller than they, but heavier, bigger-boned. Their bones were like fragile lace work. As the long night wore on, his grew too large for the flesh that was on them, for he never hungered, and the Elves did not always remember to feed him.
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Airellen danced through the city in her blue velvet gown.
Once, he circled cunningly ahead of her, so that she must either meet him face to face, or turn and run openly from him. He rehearsed in his mind words to say.
They were in the angle of a broad white square^ with benches all around, and a fountain surrounded by grass in the center. She hesitated, trapped in the angle of the square, with no way to turn. She half-turned to flee, paused, turned as though to face him, kept on turning, turning, whirling, her blue dress belling about her hidden legs in sunlight that he saw as moonlight, and her grace and beauty trapped him where he stood. Tenderness and love filled his frozen mind, and he stood in courteous silence as she walked past him and away, out into the sunlight he could not see, leaving him hopeless in the dark. . . .
Fiarril's fingers clenched on the strings of his harp. He called to one of his kin to harp the mortal away from the destroying torment that flooded his mind, while he himself sought out Airellen.
"It is a glamour you have on him!" he raged. She shrank back from him. "No wonder my strongest spells cannot keep his mind from you!"
"I did not mean to!" she cried. "What could I have done? He wounded me! He put his hands on me! And it was nothing that I did! Only thisЧ"
Her beauty flared, and passion and tenderness softened FiarrilЧfor a moment.
"But have you not tried to take it off? And why do you not speak to the poor man, who is dying for a wordЧeven a lookЧfrom you?"
Terror widened her eyes. "I cannot!" she sobbed, and ran from him, down the pale street.
Ingulf ceased to wonder at the harping that was always in his ears. It was like the air he breathed, unnoticed. The harping and the slow drum of surf never stopped. Bewildered in a maze of magic, he wandered through the night of his coming, while beyond the city men counted away the days of a month. He saw only moonlight and starlight and glowing stone.
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Neither candle nor torch lit the towers, but their walls were filled with light.
And Airellen moved through the city like a ghost that haunts a dream.
Again and yet again he tried to close the gap between them, to make her see him, speak to him, somehow. But the spur of his mad desire always melted in a reluctance to bring her pain.
Once he followed her through starlit streets like a werewolf stalking, his mind inflamed with the need to hear her voice, to speak to herЧbut a part of him shuddered with the thought of frightening her. Clear in his mind he heard her scream, saw her blood welling about his harpoon shaft. . . .
Tenderness tore his heart, and he hesitated. She turned aside, closed a door, was gone. In the moonlight outside her door he ran to and fro in torment, until the harps lured him away once more.
The beat of the waves on the shore measured no time. The night went on forever.
A white ship came swaying across the sea, its sails like glowing clouds. The Sea-Elves went dancing down to the wharves, and Ingulf with them, lending his broad shoulders to unloading bales of mysterious, sweet-smelling cargo.
Airellen, too, was in the crowd by the dock, but she kept her eyes turned from Ingulf, and a curious shyness kept him from pursuing her.
Stately mariners stared at him with eyes bright with knowledge of other-world seas, startled to see a mortal in the streets of their city; but they were newly come from the Elvish lands that know not change or sorrow, and all in this world was new to them. They stared at the Twin Suns he could not see; they marveled at the familiar host of moons.
There was feasting and song in the city of the Sea-Elves, but Fiarril got little joy of it, for he was busy with his harp, keeping Ingulf back from the sea after this new meeting with Airellen.
And if Ingulf wondered that the ship from beyond the world could arrive and depart after long feasting, all in a single night, and that night not yet over, FiarriFs harping took the thought quickly away.
Thus Fiarril fought the mortal's despair with dreams; harp-