Читать книгу Son of the Shadows - Juliet Marillier - Страница 10

Something woke me. I sat up abruptly, heart thumping. The fire in the brazier had gone out; the lantern burned low, casting a circle of faint light. Outside it was completely dark. Everything was still. I got up and went over to the pallet, lantern in hand. Evan was sleeping. I tucked the covers over him and turned to go back to bed. For a summer night, it was quite chill.

Then I heard it. A sound like a stifled gasp, the merest indrawn breath. Could such a little thing have woken me so instantly? I went out, hesitant in my bare feet and the borrowed undershirt I wore for sleeping, shivering slightly, and not just from cold. It was a deep, deep darkness, intense in its presence. Even the night birds were silent before it. With my small, dim lantern, I felt as if I were the only creature stirring in this black impenetrable world.

I took a step forwards, and another, and saw that Bran sat against the rocks at the entrance to the shelter, staring straight ahead of him into the darkness. Perhaps he, too, had heard something. I opened my mouth to ask him, and he shot out a hand and grabbed me violently by the arm, without looking at me, without saying a word. I bit back a scream of fright, and struggled to keep the lantern from falling. The clutching hand gripped so tight I thought my arm would break. Still he said nothing, but I heard it again in my mind, a voice like a terrified child’s; the voice of a boy who has wept so long he has no more tears in him. Don’t go. Don’t go away. And in the light from the lantern, which wobbled dangerously now in my free hand, I could tell that Bran did not really see me. He held me fast, but his eyes stared ahead, unfocused, blind in this night of no moon.