The Last Light of the Sun. Guy Gavriel Kay

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СКАЧАТЬ She was pleading, not giving a command.

      Helda considered it. She wasn’t sleepy at all, herself. “Not alone,” she said finally. “With his brother and the other Cadyri.”

      “But I don’t need the other two,” Rhiannon said, a hint of herself again.

      “You can’t have what you need,” Helda said again.

      Rania took a candle and went for the infusion; Eirin, bolder, was sent to bring the three men. Rhiannon sat up in the bed, felt her own cheeks with the backs of her hands, then rose and went to the window and opened it—against all the best counsel—to let the breeze cool her, if only a little.

      “Do I look all right?” she asked.

      “It doesn’t matter,” said Helda, maddeningly.

      “I feel faint.”

      “I know.”

      “I never feel this way.”

      “I know,” said Helda. “It passes.”

      “Will they be here soon?”

      ALUN DRESSED AT SPEED and went to find Dai in the banquet hall, leaving Gryffeth in the corridor with the girl and the candle. Neither of them seemed to mind. They could have gone to the women’s rooms around the corner and waited there, but they didn’t seem inclined to do that.

      He carried his harp in its leather case. The woman had specifically said that the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll wanted the singer. The brown-haired girl, telling him this at the door, before Gryffeth got out of bed, had smiled, her eyes catching the candlelight she carried.

      So Alun went to get Dai. Found him dicing at a table with two of their own friends and three of the ap Hywll men. He was relieved to see that Dai had a pile of coins in front of him already. His older brother was good at dice, decisive in betting and calculating, and with a wrist flick that let him land the bones—anyone’s bones—on the short side more often than one might expect. If he was winning, as usual, it meant he might not be too badly disturbed after all.

      Perhaps. One of the others noticed Alun in the doorway, nudged Dai. His brother glanced up, and Alun motioned him over. Dai hesitated, then saw the harp. He got up and came across the room. It was dark except for lamps on the two tables where men were awake and gaming. Most of those bedding down here were asleep by now, on pallets along the walls, the dogs among them.

      “What is it?” Dai said. His tone was curt.

      Alun kept his own voice light. “Hate to take you from winning money from Arberthi, but we’ve been invited to the Lady Rhiannon’s rooms.”

      “What?”

      “I wouldn’t make that up.”

      Dai had gone rigid, Alun could see it even in the shadows.

      “We? All of …?”

      “All three of us.” He hesitated. Told truth, better here than there. “She, um, asked for the harp, I gather.”

      “Who said that?”

      “The girl who fetched us.”

      A short silence. Someone laughed loudly at the dicing table. Someone else swore, one of the sleepers along the wall.

      “Oh, Jad. Oh, holy Jad. Alun, why did you sing that song?” Dai asked, almost whispering.

      “What?” said Alun, genuinely taken aback.

      “If you hadn’t …” Dai closed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you could say you were sleepy, didn’t want to get out of bed?”

      Alun cleared his throat. “I could.” He was finding this difficult.

      Dai shook his head. Opened his eyes again. “No, you’re already out of bed, carrying the harp. The girl saw you.” He swore then, to himself, more like a prayer than an oath, not at Alun or anyone else, really.

      Dai lifted both his hands and laid his fists on Alun’s shoulders, the way he sometimes did. Lifted them up and brought them down, halfway between a blow and an embrace. He left them there a moment, then he took his hands away.

      “You go,” he said. “I don’t think I am equal to this. I’m going outside.”

      “Dai?”

      “Go,” said his brother, at some limit of control, and turned away.

      Alun watched him walk across the room, unbar the heavy front doors of Brynn ap Hywll’s house, open one of them, and go out alone into the night.

      Someone got up from the gaming table and barred the doors behind him. Alun saw one of their own band look over at him; he gestured, and their friend swept up Dai’s purse and winnings for him. Alun turned away.

      And in that moment he heard his older brother scream an urgent, desperate warning from the yard outside. The last word he ever heard him speak.

      Then the hoofbeats of horses were out there, drumming the hard earth, and the war cries of the Erlings, and fire, as the night went wild.

      Chapter III

      She is curious and too bold. Always has been, from first awakening under the mound. A lingering interest in the other world, less fear than the others, though iron’s presence can drain her as easily as any of them.

      Tonight there are more mortals than she can remember in the house north of the wood; the aura is inescapable. No moons to cast a shadow: she has come away to see. Passed a green spruaugh on the way, seethed at him to stop his chattering, knows he will go now, to tell the queen where she is. No matter, she tells herself. They are not forbidden to look.

      The cattle are restless in their pen. First thing she knows, an awareness of that. The lights almost all doused in the house now; shining only in one chamber window, two, and in the big room beyond the heavy doors. Iron on the doors. Mortals sleep at night, fearfully.

      She feels hooves on the earth, west of them.

      Her own fear, before sight. Then riders leaping the fence, smashing through it into the farmyard below and fire is thrown and iron is drawn, is everywhere, sharp as death, heavy as death. She hasn’t come for this, almost flees, to tell the queen, the others. Stays, up above, unseen flicker in the dark-leaved trees.

      Brighter and lesser auras all around the farmyard. The doors bursting open, men running out, from house, from barn, iron to hand in the dark. A great deal of noise, screaming, though she can screen some of that away: mortals too loud, always. They are fighting now. A feeling of hotness within her, dizziness, blood smell in the yard. She feels her hair changing colour. Has seen this before, but not here. Memories, long ago, trying to cross to where she is.

      She feels ill, thinned by the iron below. Clings to a beech, draws sap-strength from that. Keeps watching, cold and shivering now, afraid. No moons, she tells herself again, no shadow or flicker of her to be seen, unless a mortal has knowledge of her world.

      She watches СКАЧАТЬ