Читаем A Feast for Crows полностью

The valonqarshall wrap his hands about your throat, the queen heard, but the voice did not belong to the old woman. The hands emerged from the mists of her dream and coiled around her neck; thick hands, and strong. Above them floated his face, leering down at her with his mismatched eyes. No, the queen tried to cry out, but the dwarf’s fingers dug deep into her neck, choking off her protests. She kicked and screamed to no avail. Before long she was making the same sound her son had made, the terrible thin sucking sound that marked Joff’s last breath on earth.

She woke gasping in the dark with her blanket wound about her neck. Cersei wrenched it off so violently that it tore, and sat up with her breasts heaving. A dream, she told herself, an old dream and a tangled coverlet, that’s all it was.

Taena was spending the night with the little queen again, so it was Dorcas asleep beside her. The queen shook the girl roughly by the shoulder. “Wake up, and find Pycelle. He’ll be with Lord Gyles, I expect. Fetch him here at once.” Still half asleep, Dorcas stumbled from the bed and went scampering across the chamber for her clothing, her bare feet rustling on the rushes.

Ages later, Grand Maester Pycelle entered shuffling, and stood before her with bowed head, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes and struggling not to yawn. He looked as if the weight of the huge maester’s chain about his wattled neck was dragging him down to the floor. Pycelle had been old as far back as Cersei could remember, but there was a time when he had also been magnificent: richly clad, dignified, exquisitely courteous. His immense white beard had given him an air of wisdom. Tyrion had shaved his beard off, though, and what had grown back was pitiful, a few patchy tufts of thin, brittle hair that did little to hide the loose pink flesh beneath his sagging chin. This is no man, she thought, only the ruins of one. The black cells robbed him of whatever strength he had. That, and the Imp’s razor.

“How old are you?” Cersei asked, abruptly.

“Four-and-eighty, if it please Your Grace.”

“A younger man would please me more.”

His tongue flicked across his lips. “I was but two-and-forty when the Conclave called me. Kaeth was eighty when they chose him, and Ellendor was nigh on ninety. The cares of office crushed them, and both were dead within a year of being raised. Merion came next, only six-and-sixty, but he died of a chill on his way to King’s Landing. Afterward King Aegon asked the Citadel to send a younger man. He was the first king I served.”

And Tommen shall be the last. “I need a potion from you. Something to help me sleep.”

“A cup of wine before bed will oft—”

“I drink wine, you witless cretin. I require something stronger. Something that will not let me dream.”

“You. Your Grace does not wish to dream?”

“What did I just say? Have your ears grown as feeble as your cock? Can you make me such a potion, or must I command Lord Qyburn to rectify another of your failures?”

“No. There is no need to involve that. to involve Qyburn. Dreamless sleep. You shall have your potion.”

“Good. You may go.” As he turned toward the door, though, she called him back. “One more thing. What does the Citadel teach concerning prophecy? Can our morrows be foretold?”

The old man hesitated. One wrinkled hand groped blindly at his chest, as if to stroke the beard that was not there. “Can our morrows be foretold?” he repeated slowly. “Mayhaps. There are certain spells in the old books. but Your Grace might ask instead, ‘Should our morrows be foretold?’ And to that I should answer, ‘No.’ Some doors are best left closed.”

“See that you close mine as you leave.” She should have known that he would give her an answer as useless as he was.

The next morning she broke her fast with Tommen. The boy seemed much subdued; ministering to Pate had served its purpose, it would seem. They ate fried eggs, fried bread, bacon, and some blood oranges newly come by ship from Dorne. Her son was attended by his kittens. As she watched the cats frolic about his feet, Cersei felt a little better. No harm will ever come to Tommen whilst I still live. She would kill half the lords in Westeros and all the common people, if that was what it took to keep him safe. “Go with Jocelyn,” she told the boy after they had eaten.

Then she sent for Qyburn. “Is Lady Falyse still alive?”

“Alive, yes. Perhaps not entirely. comfortable.”

“I see.” Cersei considered a moment. “This man Bronn. I cannot say I like the notion of an enemy so close. His power all derives from Lollys. If we were to produce her elder sister. ”