The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn. Ardath Mayhar

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ treadle, throwing shuttle, swinging batten with hypnotic rhythm, she seemed weaving the cycles of time and of life into the growing web before her. Her eyes were set upon the pattern, her mind far away—or in­ward. No touch reached her consciousness, no word pene­trated her ear. All her being was focused upon the warp, the weft upon the loom. When Si-Lun stepped forward and grasped her hands, preventing their motion, she writhed as if in agony, her eyes still fixed, past his shoul­der, upon the cloth.

      The men retreated into the passageway, their faces grave and their hearts filled with foreboding.

      “Let us go into the fields,” said Kla-Noh, “and work in the hay with the others, clearing our minds and relieving our hearts with good labor. Too much thought stifles it­self, and to stretch the muscles oftentimes stretches the ability to think.”

      Good was the clean air, fragrant the cut hay as they walked in the fields, forking the layers over to dry in the sun. A spatter of insects shot up before their feet with a crackle of wings, and the sweat ran down their arms and their backs, cooling them in the breezes.

      In the next field the children were scything the stand­ing grasses, shouting and laughing as they disturbed nest­ing birds and sunning serpents. The air rang with birdsong from the surrounding forest, and the stream added its clear note among the stones of its bed. The lit­tle valley among the mountains seemed brimful with all the good things of living, and the spirits of the Seekers rose, even in the midst of their worry.

      “The gods will not spoil this paradise with tragedy,” said Si-Lun, pausing to wipe the sweat from his face upon his sleeve. “They have placed here all that is good and given it to those who know it and prize it and nurture it as best they may. Surely they have also sent us for a purpose and with an answer to the darkness that threatens.”

      “The answer will come,” said Kla-Noh, leaning upon his fork and gazing up into the ridges that shone with fir-dark and gold in the morning sunlight. “A sureness grows within me. We bear the answer in our hearts and our hands. It but remains to seek it out. In this place nothing is impossible, nothing insoluble. We were sent, and we are here. For the present, this is enough.”

      At midday all returned to the house, where the thump­ing of the loom continued, regular as the pounding of waves upon a shore. The food was sweet in their mouths, and they worked the afternoon away with zest, feeling their muscles rejoicing in their strength and their lungs expanding in the fir-sharp air.

      As they went, washed and cleanly clothed, to their sup­per, Si-Lun said quietly to his foster father, “It may be that a solution is knocking at the door of my conscious­ness. In some cranny of my memory there is a stored fact that is now tapping away, seeking to be re-found and brought into the light.”

      Kla-Noh squeezed his arm and smiled. “When we have eaten and the younglings are about their evening sports, then we will talk of this.”

      Thus, when the children went out into the twilight to play upon the lawns and in the edges of the forest, they sought out Lo-Shel and sat with him in quietude, lending their presence as Si-Lun thought long.

      “What, Lo-Shel, is the use to which Shallah puts the cloth that is spun in her trances?” he asked at last.

      “It is folded away and put into a chest, which she never opens save to add more,” he answered. “She seems to fear to look upon it, yet she lifts it with caution and tenderly packs it away. I have never touched it, though never has she said me nay. It seems to me such a mystery that I am wary of it.”

      Si-Lun nodded. A wrinkle formed between his green eyes. “Has she never ripped out the weave?”

      Lo-Shel almost blanched. “Nay, never. Such would seem almost...blasphemy. It is sent of the gods.”

      “True,” the Seeker answered. “Yet this sending will end by slaying Shallah, as surely as sunrise. So we must act in unorthodox ways to break it and to bring her back into the world of life. It is in my thought that such has been done before, in another time and place, with another kind of sending altogether. Yet the principle is the same. If we destroy the thing whole, it might rebound against Shal­lah. But if we simply...unmake it, there is a hope that she may return unscathed. Will you give your leave for us to try this?”

      “Truly I will,” said Lo-Shel. “I will unweave the cloth with my own hand if such will save my wife from this doom.”

      “You must be there, hale and strong, to welcome her back,” said Kla-Noh. “The unweaving is work for Seekers. We have striven with strange things before and may pro­tect ourselves in ways unknown to you.”

      The powder added to her food had given Shallah more than usual endurance, and still she sat at the loom. They entered the chamber, and Lo-Shel took his place behind her. Then Si-Lun approached the loom, with Kla-Noh close beside him. And when Shallah sank in sleep before the stilled heckles, the two Seekers began pulling out the weft that she had woven. Tedious work it was, and difficult for their clumsy fingers, yet they persisted, and the patterns began to disappear.

      Then Shallah gave a great cry and sought to raise her­self, but Lo-Shel held her in his arms and would not let her go. Thread after thread was loosened. The light grew dim and Kla-Noh brought candles, yet still they worked, ripping from the loom the long belt of cloth woven by Shallah over weeks and months. At first she struggled wildly, but as the patterns melted away she grew quiet. And still they tugged and pulled and cut and ripped.

      At last Lo-Shel whispered, “Her eyes—her eyes are be­ginning to see.”

      And so it was. The blue eyes that had stared so blindly now began to shift their gaze away from that ill-omened cloth. A puzzled wrinkle crossed her forehead, and Shal­lah looked up at her husband, who held her closely.

      Into the night, long and long, the Seekers worked, and before day the weaving was reduced to a great mound of yarn that eddied about their feet and stuck upon their clothing. Then Shallah smiled at them, the smile of a weary child, and drooped in sleep upon Lo-Shel’s shoulder.

      Then they went away into their own chambers and closed the doors and slept, while the sun rejoiced the mountains, and the birds and the children greeted the renewal of the day.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4RVQRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgABwESAAMAAAABAAEAAAEaAAUAAAABAAAAYgEbAAUAAAABAAAA agEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAExAAIAAAAeAAAAcgEyAAIAAAAUAAAAkIdpAAQAAAABAAAApAAAANAACvyA AAAnEAAK/IAAACcQQWRvYmUgUGhvdG9zaG9wIENTNS4xIFdpbmRvd3MAMjAxNzowNDoxOCAxNzo1 MzoyNQAAA6ABAAMAAAABAAEAAKACAAQAAAABAAACWKADAAQAAAABAAADIAAAAAAAAAAGAQM СКАЧАТЬ