Читать «THE SEA DEVIL S EYE (зксм-3)» онлайн - страница 74

"If he would talk to me, I might."

"He doesn't know himself," Glawinn explained. "Even if he did, he can't explain."

"Does he think I'm dense?"

"In his eyes he feels he isn't worthy of you."

"Because he is wanted somewhere for something?" she asked. "I told him that didn't matter."

"Maybe not to you, lady, but it does to him. In his own way, though, I don't think he quite fully understands it. He strives for perfection."

"I've never met a man who didn't have his faults," Sabyna said. "Though, I admit you've come closer than anyone."

"My faults?"

"You're a busybody," Sabyna told him. "I thought paladins knew enough to keep to their own affairs."

The knight blushed. "I beg your forgiveness. I struggled with this decision, and I'd hoped I'd made the right choice."

"You have," she conceded. "If I'd spent another day like this, with no one to talk to, I think I'd have gone out of my mind."

"I thought you talked to Azla."

"She doesn't understand Jherek any more than I do."

Glawinn smiled gently and said, "Probably not."

Sabyna looked away from the paladin. "It's never been like this for me. I've seen handsome men and wealthy men, and men who could turn a woman's head with only a handful of pretty words, but I've never met anyone like Jherek."

"Nor have I."

Tears stung Sabyna's eyes. "I've never pursued a man before. Climbing that rigging to tell him my feelings was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

"But, I wager, not as hard as the climb back down."

"No," she said. "Do you know what he told me?"

Glawinn shook his head. "I can only guess that it was as little as possible."

"Aye…" Sabyna didn't trust her voice to speak any further.

"If it helps at all," the paladin stated gently, "I believe he tells you everything he knows."

"There's a lot he won't tell me."

"Can't tell you, lady, not won't. There is a difference."

"You defend him very well."

"I didn't come here to help him, lady. I came to help you."

"Me?"

Glawinn nodded in resignation and said, "The Morning-lord knows, I can't help him. He won't let me, and his course has already been charted.''

"What course?"

"To becoming the kind of man he wants to be," Glawinn said. The kind of man he has to be."

"Will he be that man?"

Hesitation furrowed Glawinn's brow. "I know not, lady. I've never seen someone come so far, yet have so far to go. I can tell you this: his path will heal him-or it will kill him."

The solemn way the paladin spoke pushed Sabyna's pain away and replaced it with fear.

"And what are we to do?" she asked. "What am I to do?"

"The only thing we can, lady. Give him the freedom to make the decisions he needs must make"

"What if it kills him?" Sabyna asked.

"Then we will bury him, lady, say prayers over him if that is possible, and be grateful for ever having known him."

*****

Jherek strode barefoot across one of the broken beams still above water. Black Champion lay mostly under the sea now, her black bulk stretched like a shadow against the green water. Seagulls sat on the spars that made up her ribs and gave plaintive cries.