[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.A young man pretended to cry, holding out his hand for his shy fourteen-year-old fiancee to heal.Miranda thought that the whole undignified display was perfectly ridiculous.“I’ve never seen grown men carry on like that,” she said in amazed disapproval to the elf lord when he returned to sit beside her.She had a vague feeling that he should share her disapproval, if only because his own dignity was so remarkable.But the handsome and stately lord just watched his elves with a pleased smile.“I have,” he commented.“Many times.”When the inner shoes were dry, Igira peeled them off and handed them to her.They were something like the felt that she knew, but there was a springiness to them that normal felt didn’t have, and they were amazingly tough.Nir helped her up, but she had to walk barefoot to the shoemaking elf.Her goblin slippers had completely disappeared.Galnar was the oldest man in the camp, but Miranda had no idea of that.He didn’t look particularly old; he just looked kind.His hair was so blond that it was almost white, and his green eyes and shrewd smile reminded her painfully of Marak.He had exhausted his fun with the healing spells and was playing his violin softly to himself when Miranda walked up with the elf lord, ready for him to make her shoes.Elf slippers were made of just two pieces of leather, the large one wrapping under the foot and the smaller one covering the top, and in order to get a good fit, the leather was stitched with the foot already inside it.Miranda stared breathlessly as the curved bone needle, unguided by any hand, flashed through the leather almost faster than the eye could see, pulling the pieces tight around her feet.She was sure she felt the stab of that needle at least a dozen times.When the Stitching Spell was over at last, Miranda took a few steps, surprised to find that her new shoes, with no hard soles, let her feel the ground beneath her feet.They were more like gloves than shoes, she decided.Then she realized with an unpleasant shock that she had almost a death grip on the elf lord’s hand.During the spell, she had squeezed it so tightly that now it was slippery with sweat.Uncomfortable about this, she tried to free herself, and the stars at her wrists began to sparkle.The elf lord noticed them and let her go.“That’s the first time you’ve been glad of a hand to hold,” he said quietly.Miranda was too embarrassed to reply.• • •The goblin King had come to the end of a trying day.It had started long before dawn, when he had had to sleep on the cold stone of the metal grove beside his runaway wife.Not that that had done much good, he reflected.Even though he was sure he had been unable to do more than doze, she was gone again when he awoke.This time, her lengthy, wandering trail had ended in the green banquet hall’s jam closet.By that time it was morning, so he had roused her from her nest behind the pickle barrels and jars of brandied fruit and had kept her with him all day, walking through the valley under the waters of Hollow Lake.He was sure that she had enjoyed visiting the flowers, but he couldn’t persuade her to say a single word.Now he was exhausted from the long nights and hard days, and he was sure that she must be exhausted, too.With her penchant for roving, she was sleeping much less than he was.If the day had been a trial, he couldn’t complain about its ending.He was lying in his own comfortable bed with his nomadic wife beside him.She sat on the bed with her legs folded under her and her silky black hair around her shoulders.Slowly, gracefully, she was combing out the tresses, watching him all the while.The First Fathers of the elves, he knew, had endowed all the members of their race with beauty, but there was almost as much difference between the attractive elf commoners and the stunning elf nobles as there was between an average human and an elf Arianna was spectacular even for an elf lord’s daughter, he was sure.Some times her beauty made his head swim.What he wouldn’t give, he thought drowsily, to have his arms around her now.Watching her comb the smooth black locks, he felt his worries slipping away.Someday soon, he would take her in his arms and feel that cloud of soft hair around him.What a day that would be, he thought blissfully, closing his eyes with a sigh.A second later, he opened them again.“That was an excellent sleep spell,” he said coldly.“A subtle and powerful effort.I would have woken up to find you halfway across the lake valley, I suppose.If you don’t stop these nonsensical peregrinations, I’ll lock our bedroom door with a King’s Lock, and you’ll find your magic of very little use to you then.”With a cry, Arianna flung down the comb and retreated from the bed.The goblin King propped himself up on his paw to look for her.She had taken refuge behind a brocade-covered bench and was peering at him over its top.“Honestly, Arianna!” he exclaimed.“What sort of behavior is this? Sometimes I feel as if I’ve married a bird or a squirrel instead of a woman.I should be luring you to my side with lumps of sugar!”No answer.The elf girl laid her arms across the top of the bench and rested her head on them, still watching him.“But you can speak,” he pointed out.“You spoke to me in the truce circle.I’ll make you a bargain.If you’ll start speaking to me again, I won’t lock the door.”He saw her hesitate and glance longingly toward it.After a moment of thought, she shook her head.The goblin King was pleased.This indication of further resistance was in itself more cooperation than she ordinarily gave him.“All right, I’ll make you another bargain,” he said.“Come lie down now so that we can get some sleep, and I won’t lock the door.”Arianna emerged from her corner and slipped into bed next to him, pulling the blanket over herself so gracefully and gently that he wouldn’t even have known she was there if he hadn’t been looking at her.She really was like a wild creature, he mused.No wonder he never woke up when she left.Propped on his paw, he studied his apprehensive wife.He stroked her black hair, marveling at its softness, and played with the strands around her face.She stared at him anxiously, not moving a muscle, and when he took her hand, she didn’t resist.But when he raised the hand to his lips, she gasped and tried to jerk it away.Marak Catspaw gave an irritated sigh.While she might look like a woman to him, it was obvious that he still looked like a monster to her, something that might decide to bite off a finger and chew it up for a snack.The goblin King found himself once again cursing the villainous elf lord.`Arianna,” he said with soft bitterness, “I know you won’t be able to believe this, but I had a fiancee.too.She was a human girl, taller than you are, and quite lovely as humans go, with red hair that was even more remarkable than yours.She liked me, and she liked to talk with me; we had read the same books, and we enjoyed discussing them.She used to smile at me, and even kiss me, and as incredible as it sounds to you, my fiancee wanted to marry me.The night that I married you, she shed tears
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]