Silver's Edge. Anne Kelleher

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СКАЧАТЬ Where do you intend to look?”

      “I’m going to the Queen, and I’m showing her the goblin’s head. Goblins shouldn’t even be able to get into Brynhyvar. Haven’t you ever heard of Bran Brownbeard?”

      “Of course I have but maybe not every story’s true. Don’t you think you should at least talk to Granny Wren?”

      “Granny Wren?” Her skeptical tone was a perfect echo of Dougal’s, an octave or so higher.

      “She’s a wicce-woman, Nessa, surely you should talk to her before you go—”

      “What’s corn magic got to do with goblins? There’s more to this than either of us understand, Griffin. Those visitors last night—the ones who came in so late? Papa recognized one of them, but the other was a sidhe. I saw the eyes when he drew back his hood, just as Papa ordered me back to bed. You think it’s coincidence that one of them comes to the forge late last night, when all decent folk are long abed, and then a dead goblin washes ashore upon our very lake? The same time as Papa disappears? Well, I don’t. For all I know, or you know, or anyone else for that matter, this was all part of some trap to snatch him into the OtherWorld. My mother was lost there, and I won’t lose him, too.” Momentarily her expression melted, as her mouth turned down and her eyes flooded with tears she blinked away hard. She squared her shoulders, mouth set once more in its firm line, and Griffin groaned inwardly. He knew that look. It was the one she habitually wore whenever Dougal set a challenge before them both. “I won’t let them have him. I don’t have time right now to listen to a wicce-woman repeat some ancient story all of us have heard a thousand times. I’ll find Papa and bring him home if it’s the last thing I do, I swear.” She got to her feet and swung the ax over her shoulder. Her hair tumbled down her arms and she thrust it back impatiently. Her father’s insistence that she keep her black curls long was his one recognition of his only child’s sex. “Stand back.”

      Aghast by her casual savagery, Griffin moved back as she brought the ax down, the blade grazing the goblin’s slack jaw by a hair. It bit through the flesh and gristle and stopped with a dull thud in the neckbone. She tugged the blade free and raised it once more, heedless of the red slime dripping from it, and in one smooth motion, brought it all the way down again. This time the blade buried itself in the earth, and the head lolled back, rolling slightly to one side on the slight grade. Nessa handed Griffin the ax, picked the head up by the hair and shoved it without flinching into the sack. From somewhere close, a cock crowed experimentally. “I have to hurry.”

      She slung the sack over her shoulder and picked up the lantern, as he flung the ax aside with disgust. Easier by far to make a new one, than to imagine cleaning off that gore. “What am I to tell everyone?” he whispered.

      “The truth, of course. Oh. Here.” She set the sack down and felt beneath her tunic for the slender cord which held her silver amulet. She bent her head and worked it over her chin and through the tangled length of her hair. “Take it.” She held it out and stamped her foot as the cock crowed again. “I don’t have much time.”

      He caught it as it dropped from her hand, then stumbled after her, his mind roiling with disbelief and desperation. With sure steps she strode up the road, through the silent, sleeping village. The crunch of their feet on the cold gravel was the only sound, their breath curling in long white plumes through the predawn air. Not even a barking dog marked their passing. At the smithy gate, she paused. “No sense in you coming any farther.”

      He hesitated. What would Dougal want him to do, other than locking her in the root cellar? Nothing seemed viable, but a thought occurred to him. “Wait,” he said. He ran into the house, grabbed a round loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese that one of the women had left. He reached for his own pack, a treasured gift from Dougal at last Solstice, and shoved the food inside. He ran back outside and thrust it at her. “Remember, you mustn’t eat or drink anything of the OtherWorld.”

      She favored him with a quick surprised smile, then nodded and slung it on her other shoulder.

      “I don’t think I should tell anyone the truth, Nessa, about where you’ve gone. Not unless you don’t come back after a day or so, all right? People already—” he hesitated, loathe to hurt her with a reminder of the shadow under which she lived. “Already talk.” Their eyes met, and hers were steady, full of sure and certain purpose.

      “I guess you’re right,” she said.

      It occurred to Griffin that he might never see her again. He wanted to take her hand, to tell her all the things he rehearsed alone at night. He was not ill-favored, they worked well together, surely the smithy would someday be hers. They were already a good team. Marriage was not such a ridiculous possibility.

      Despite the chill, her face was covered by a fine sheen of sweat, and he thought she had never looked more beautiful. The words felt like a cork in his throat and he felt the moment passing, slipping away as inexorably as the night. He seized her by the shoulders and pressed a hard desperate kiss on her mouth. Her lips were warm and firm and she didn’t immediately recoil. Then she pulled away, and he half thought she might hit him. “Just come home,” he said by way of apology.

      She raised her chin and squared her shoulders. “Count on it.”

      Then the cock crowed once more. “Hurry,” he said, awed and grateful that she had neither slapped him nor wiped away his kiss.

      With a nod of farewell, she strode down the road, veering off toward the thick stand of trees which lay between the village and the lake. The lantern bobbed in rhythm to her steps, twinkling like a star.

      “Nessa. Don’t eat or drink anything!” he called after her, wishing the words were sufficient to change her mind and bring her back. But once Nessa made her mind up to do something, it was always easier to get out of the way.

      “Best bank that fire,” her voice floated back to him on the wind. “Papa will have your head—” The rest was lost, carried off by the freshening breeze, into a half-heard murmur. The lantern flared once more as though she turned to wave, and then it blinked out, swallowed by the trees. He raised his hand, both in blessing and farewell, and saw a dark trickle edging down his palm to his wrist. He had clenched the amulet so hard, his hand bled.

      The thick hide sack barely suppressed the reek of goblin flesh. Nessa shoved the heavy bulge on its leather strap behind her, trying not to think of the thing which nestled now on the curve of her rump. She squinted through the trees. The black forest rose around her, the tree trunks silent as sentries beneath the still star-studded sky. White mist swirled in mossy hollows, and a dense odor, musty and faintly sweet, rose from the forest floor and permeated the chilly air. But the scent of morning was on the light breeze which stirred the few leaves that clung to the late-autumn trees, and just now, behind her, where the village lay sleeping in the predawn quiet, she thought she heard another cock crow. She had less time than she’d hoped.

      The soft squish of spongy cress beneath her boots assured her that she followed the thin line of the narrow stream that, snaking beneath the trees, led down to the lake. Streams such as this were called Faerie roads, and usually avoided. For the stream itself was nearly invisible, buried by the thick cover of fallen leaves, their edges crisp and sere. The stories said that water was one of the surest conduits between the mortal world and the OtherWorld, the one called TirNa’lugh in the old language. And it was said, it was during the in-between times and in the in-between places, when and where things were no longer one thing, and not yet quite another, that one was most likely to slip into this intersecting reality.

      She quickened her pace, breathing hard, and out of force of habit, groped at her throat with one cold hand, forgetting for a moment that СКАЧАТЬ