"Anderson, Poul - Queen Of Air & Darkness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Time. Other series concern Nicholas van Rijn, the interstellar trader,
Dominic Flandry and Trygve Yamamura.

Anderson's novel The Byworlder was a finalist in the balloting for the 1971
Nebula Awards; and his novelette "The Queen of Air and Darkness" won
a Nebula Award.

The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. But
there would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossoms
opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steelflowers rising blue from
the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-
never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them in iridescent
wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons the
sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full,
shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they made
were blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across half
heaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.

A boy and a girl sat on Wolund's Barrow just under the dolmen it
upbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showed
startlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still dark
from that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they wore
only garlands. He played on a bone flute

and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about \.
sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Out..lings
and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they
had once dwelt in the lands of men.

His notes piped cold around her voice:

"Cast a spell, weave it well of dust and dew and night and you."

A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hillhidden
river, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneath
the aurora.

A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and' two legs,
but the legs were long and claw-footed and feather covered it to the end
of a tail and broad wings. The face was half, human, dominated by its
eyes. Had Ayoch been able to standwholly erect, he would have reached
to the boy's shoulder.

The girl rose. "He carries a burden," she said. Her vision was not.. meant
for twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learned
how to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the,fact that ordinarily
a pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.

"And he comes from the south." Excitement jumped in the boy, sudden
as a green flame that went across the constellation Lyrth. He sped down