"Ball, Margaret - Shadow Gate, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ball Margaret)

screamed, thin and high like a snared rabbit, and nursed his injured hand. Lisa scooted around him and ran for the open arch and die shadowy image of the bookshop. She never even saw the two men who tripped her up and sat on her. There was a crushing weight on her back, and her left foot was agonizingly twisted under the weight of another man, and she heard the one she had hurt talking about how he'd like to mark her with his knife blade before they delivered her.
"Stand up," one of her captors said, and getting off her, he hauled her to her feet. "You're not hurt, my lady. Not yet." He whipped thin lengths of cord about her wrists and ankles while she was still too stunned from the fall to resist. "Please notice that these cords are braided about an iron wire," he advised her, "so your pagan cantrips will avail you naught, Sybille. But if you do not struggle and abrade the cords, the iron will not touch your flesh. Despite Brother Hugh's careless remarks, we do not wish you injured unnecessarily."
"Good," Lisa said. "At least we're in agreement about something. Where are you taking me? And why?" She was not entirely sure that she wanted to know the answers. "And by the way," she went on hastily, "if you think you're kidnapping somebody named Sybille, may I point out that you've got the wrong person? I'm not even from this world."
They ignored everything she said and went on wrapping bits of iron-reinforced cord about her person, waving crosses in the air around her, and chanting bits of prayers. Lisa recognized some of the words.
"What are you, anyway? Monks? What order? Look, if you'll just take me to your abbot, I canЧ"
"You shall face the head of our Order in good time, elf-maiden," said the man who'd grabbed her first, "and I think you will be more minded to con-
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fess the truth then than you are now. In time we must all follow the one path."
"Oh, cut it out! You sound like an old war movieЧ and not a very good one. What is this routine? Ye haf vays of making you talk?'" But they probably did, and Lisa was beginning to feel sick. Perhaps she was going to feint. Certainly something seemed to be going wrong with her vision; the glade seemed blurry now, wavering as if everything were under water.
"I hope I broke your finger," Lisa said. The clouds were coming lower, brushing the treetops, turning into fantastic shapes even as she watched.
"What's that?" Unable to point, she jerked her chin towards one of the worst looking shapes. The tall man who was binding her turned, cried out and threw up his hands against the dragon-shaped darkness with its smouldering heart. The dark shape engulfed him and its scaled tail lashed around towards Lisa and her other captors. The two men threw themselves down as a screeching fireball passed overhead. There was a roaring from the forest like a pride of starving lions, and a horse screamed somewhere. Thunder came rolling down on them from all sides, and in the midst of the thunder was a silver-haired man on a white horse. His cloak and the horse's saddle and reins glowed like moonlight, and he came riding through the cloud-shapes as if they weren't there and lifted Lisa with one arm to sit on the saddle before him.
With her arms and ankles bound she couldn't help herself balance; she was completely dependent on the arm that encircled her. She couldn't even put a hand before her face to protect herself from the branches and leaves that whisked by. She closed her eyes tightly and buried her face against the rider's chest and tried not to think about what would happen if he let her fell. She could smell the resinous trees all around her, and the trickle of the stream
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was muted by distance. They were deep in the forest now, moving too fast and too quietly and too smoothly; she could have sworn the horse's feet weren't touching the ground.
She opened her eyes a slit and peeked, and wished she hadn't. The silvery horse was galloping at least a foot above the surface of the path, and the rider had his eyes closed and was murmuring something in words that rhymed and rang and whispered through tiie air like a wind out of nowhere. Lisa closed her own eyes again. If she was about to break her neck, she didn't want to see it coming.
After a long timeЧtoo longЧ-their pace slowed and the rider allowed his horse to touch die ground. Lisa could tell from the small bumps and jolts that they were going slowly now, the horse ambling along as if it was too tired to even think about galloping again.
"You can look now, my lady." The man's voice was light, amused, with a hint of silvery chimes in the undertones. He sounded happy and secure and completely in control of the situation; Lisa felt herself responding to that certainty, wanting to trust her rescuer. She resented and fought the feeling. But she did open her eyes again and look around her.
They were riding along a narrow, rocky path misted with rainbows. On one side of the path a steep hill rose into the sky, covered with dark green trees that were not quite pines or firs or spruce, but something in between all the conifers of Earth. Their springy needles made a dark green and brown carpet with a resinous scent that made Lisa think of winter and snow and Christmas.
To the other side the path fell away into nothingness, a space of rainbows in the mist with die sound of felling water on rocks a long way below. And before them a yawning gorge opened directly through the path. Lisa gasped as the horse stepped daintily out onto emptiness.
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"I had not thought a Queen of Elfliame would be surprised by my poor illusions," the man who held her said, as calmly as if they were still on the solid path.
"Illusions?"
He waved one hand, and the gorge shimmered until Lisa could just see the path beneath them, like a double-exposed photograph.
"Ohl" Then, "What did you call me?" She resolved not to look down or ahead any more. It was too unsettling. Had the flying also been an illusion?
"Sybille, Lady of Elfliame, well met and well come to your realm again," the man said. He sounded almost as if he were singing: the formal cadences and intonations of his speech reminded Lisa of the words with which he had sent his horse flying above the path, whisking through air and illusion. "I am Berengar, Count of the Garronais, charged with guarding my lady's safe path through the Gate at the Stonemaidens. I crave your pardon that I was delayed in greeting you. IЧwe have been in some anxiety about my foster-son, who has taken a hurt that even Idaine can't heal him of." He sounded more human now that the formal phrases of greeting were done with. "I watched by his bed last night and sent one of my knights to take the guard of the Gate. It wasn't until your passing woke the Gate to full life that I quested forth in trance and found no trace of Garins. I came as quickly as I couldЧand glad am I to see my lady has taken no hurt from those foul DurandinesЧ"
He sounded harassed and apologetic and almost human by now. "It's all right," Lisa said, "truly it is, they didn't hurt me, but I'm not who you think I am. This Sybille or whoever. My name is Lisa, and I'm not a queen of anywhere."
Berengar looked pained. "My lady has suffered many perilous adventures in the world of the iron-
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demons, doubtless, but here it is not necessary to hide. My keep is safe enough against such little mortal schemers as die Brothers of Saint Durand."
"Your keep," Lisa repeated, looking around her at rocks and trees and the mist above die river.
"Even here."
There was music, and sunshine striking rays of prismatic color through the rainbows, and people cheering. The horse stopped; the rider lifted her to the ground and Lisa stared in amazement. Trees and hill had melted away like a dream, leaving behind a construction of lacy towers and walls, arches and bridges, carved balconies and spiraling bridges. The peaks of the towers matched the jagged outlines of the rocky hill and the curving sweep of the farthest wall replaced the downward curve of the tree-covered slope.
Before the castle stood a little group of men and women, tall and slender and silver-haired like the rider who'd brought her here, and dressed in trailing long-sleeved robes of peacock hues. Iridescent flashes of blue and green and purple, singing rainbows of fire-colors and floating bubbles of scented flower colors dazzled Lisa's eyes. How can a color have scent, or sound?
She didn't have time to think out an answer to die puzzle; the slender silver-haired people were all kneeling as the rider lifted her from the horse, and then he knelt too.
"My Lady Sybille," he addressed her, looking up with almond-shaped greenish eyes whose slant was not quite Oriental, not even quite human. "My lady, welcome back to Elfhame. Be pleased to receive our gratitude and our homage that you have returned to save your people."
The courtly speech and die circle of kneeling people made Lisa feel as if she were acting in a play. Something equally gracious was called for in response.
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But she didn't know her lines. She was tired and frightened and hungry, and all this shimmering glamour was only another net around her, prettier tiian die chains she'd first been threatened with but perhaps even more dangerous.
"What did you call me?" she asked for die second time.
"Sybiller
Lisa shook her head. "I told you. That's not my name."
Now dus Berengar looked bewildered. "I mean it," Lisa insisted, "you've got die wrong person. I gather you were expecting somebody named Sybille to appear out of thin air and solve all your problems? You'd better go back and look again. I'm not a Queen of Elfhame, my name isn't Sybille, and I have problems of my own." Beginning widi die need to find her way back to die circle of standing stones where she'd entered diis world. Berengar's rescue might have saved her from an immediate threat, but he had also carried her too far away from her only way home. As for what would happen when she got there, whedier she'd be able to return to die safe smoky darkness of Mahluli's bookshop, she would just have to worry about diat when die time came.
"You are confused," said Berengar gendy, "by your journey between die worlds, and perhaps by your sufferings in the world of die iron-demons. We will speak again when you have rested, my lady."
He managed to rise and bow and swirl his cape about him in one fluid movement, more graceful than any dancer. He offered her his arm, and Lisa was too tired and confused to do more than take it. We can sort things out later.
She was relieved to find that die interior of Berengar's home was less confusing than die rainbow-hued, constantly shifting exterior. Here, though die furnishings and architecture were unfamiliar, at least
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