The Last Light of the Sun. Guy Gavriel Kay

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ ah, are one of them. Part of, ah, the seithr?”

      She took a step towards him. He saw her shake her head within the hooded robe. She wasn’t laughing now. “Bern Thorkellson, I see you because you aren’t under any spell. You will be taken as soon as you enter the town. Captured like a child. She lied to you.”

      He took a deep breath. Looked up at the sky. Ghost moon, early spring stars. His hands were trembling, holding the horse’s reins.

      “Why would … she said she hated Halldr as much as I did!”

      “That’s true. He was no friend to us. Thinshank’s dead, though. She can use the goodwill of whoever becomes governor now. Her capturing you—and they will be told before midday that she put you under a spell and forced you to ride back to them—is a way to achieve that, isn’t it?”

      He didn’t feel guarded any more.

      “We need food and labour out here,” she went on calmly. “We need the fear and assistance of the town, both. All volurs require this, wherever they are. You become her way of starting again after the long quarrel with Halldr. Your coming here tonight was a gift to her.”

      He thought of the woman above him in the bed, lit only by the fire.

      “In more ways than one,” the girl added, as if reading his thoughts.

      “She has no power, no seithr?”

      “I didn’t say that. Although I don’t think she does.”

      “There’s no magic? Nothing to make a man invisible?”

      She laughed again. “If one spearman can’t hit a target when he throws, do you decide that spears are useless?” It was too dark to make out any expression on her face. He realized something.

      “You hate her,” he said. “That’s why you are here. Because … because she had the snake bite you!”

      He could see she was surprised, hesitating for the first time. “I don’t love her, no,” she agreed. “But I wouldn’t be here because of that.”

      “Why then?” Bern asked, a little desperately.

      Again a pause. He wished, now, that there were light. He still hadn’t seen her face.

      She said, “We are kin, Bern Thorkellson. I’m here because of that.”

      “What?” He was stunned.

      “Your sister married my brother, on the mainland.”

      “Siv married …?”

      “No, Athira wedded my brother Gevin.”

      He felt abruptly angry, couldn’t have said why. “That doesn’t make us kin, woman.”

      Even in darkness he could see that he had wounded her.

      The horse moved again, whickered, impatient with standing.

      The woman said, “I am a long way from home. Your family is the closest I have on this island, I suppose. Forgive me for presuming.”

      His family was landless, his father exiled. He was a servant, compelled to sleep in a barn on straw for two more years.

      “What presumption?” Bern said roughly. “That isn’t what I meant.” He wasn’t sure what he’d meant.

      There was a silence. He was thinking hard. “You were sent to the volur? They reported you had a gift?”

      The hood moved up and down. “Curious, how often unwed youngest daughters have a gift, isn’t it?”

      “Why did I never hear of you?”

      “We are meant to be unattached, to be the more dependent. That’s why they bring girls from distant villages and farms. All the seers do that. I’ve spoken to your mother, though.”

      “You have? What? Why …?”

      The shrug again. “Frigga’s a woman. Athira gave me a message for her.”

      “You all have your tricks, don’t you?” He felt bitter, suddenly.

      “Swords and axes are so much better, aren’t they?” she said sharply. She was staring at him again, though he knew the darkness hid his face, too. “We’re all trying to make ourselves a life, Bern Thorkellson. Men and women both. Why else are you out here now?”

      Bitterness still. “Because my father is a fool who killed a man.”

      “And his son is what?”

      “A fool about to die before the next moon rises. A good way to … make a life, isn’t it? Useful kin for you to have.”

      She said nothing, looked away. He heard the horse again. Felt the wind, a change in it, as though the night had indeed turned, moving now towards dawn.

      “The snake,” he said awkwardly. “Is it …?”

      “I’m not poisoned. It hurts.”

      “You … walked out here a long way.”

      “There’s one of us out all night on watch. We take turns, the younger ones. People come in the dark. That’s how I saw you on the horse and told her.”

      “No, I meant … just now. To warn me.”

      “Oh.” She paused. “You believe me, then?”

      For the first time, a note of doubt, wistfulness. She was betraying the volur for him.

      He grinned crookedly. “You are looking right at me, as you said. I can’t be that hard to see. Even a piss-drunk raider falling off his horse will spot me when the sun comes up. Yes, I believe you.”

      She let out a breath.

      “What will they do to you?” he asked. It had just occurred to him.

      “If they find out I was here? I don’t want to think about it.” She paused. “Thank you for asking.”

      He felt suddenly shamed. Cleared his throat. “If I don’t ride back into the village, will they know you … warned me?”

      Her laughter again, unexpected, bright and quick. “They could possibly decide you were clever, by yourself.”

      He laughed too. Couldn’t help it. Was aware that it could be seen as a madness sent by the gods, laughter at the edge of dying one hideous death or another. Not like the mindlessness of the water-disease—a man bitten by a sick fox—but the madness where one has lost hold of the way things are. Laughter here, another kind of strangeness in this dark by the wood among the spirits of the dead, with the blue moon overhead, pursued by a wolf in the sky.

      The world would end when that wolf caught the two moons.

      He had more immediate СКАЧАТЬ