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

"At once, my lord."
"You are fortunate," Alianora said as the curtains closed behind the boy.
"I have had him for only two years, and next year he will go to the schools at Ys to learn the ways of his power."
"Even two years is more time to be a parent than most of our people are given now. Before the Catastrophe our children were born infrequently, but there were always enough to replenish the race. NowЧ" Alianora raised her empty hands before her. "You were the last child born before Kieran. And bringing his spirit into the world must have weakened his parents fatally, else they'd have warded themselves better against the storm that took them. The Realm is dying, Berengar. We must reverse the Catastrophe."
She turned away from Berengar and traced the image on a silken hanging with one long finger. As the cloth shivered and swayed beneath the pressure of her fingertip, the heavy folds moved and different parts of the large tapestry gleamed in the white light that emanated from the knot-carved stone: a lioness licking her cubs into shape, a gerfalcon stooping to his prey, a dragon breathing down cleansing fire upon a leprous knight. "I have spent many months in Ys, consulting with the far-seers and the memory-chanters there, and reading the scrolls of the Catastrophe. Where do you think the power of the Stones went, Berengar? Don't you remember the First Law?"
** 'Power is neither destroyed nor created. It flows and is guided; it is used and it is renewed,' " Berengar recited from memory. "But the Stones are different."
"Why?"
He made a helpless gesture. "WellЧtheir power was destroyed."
"No. I have studied the Catastrophe longer, per-
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haps, than any save the sages of Ys, and I myself have more power to see beyond the Three Realms than any elven sage in the schools." Alianora paused, fingering the tapestry. "Berengar, I believe that the power of the Stones was not destroyed, but sent into another world. We know that such worlds exist; before the Catastrophe, our folk made Gates in the places of power, and we visited back and forth freely. Since then we have not dared to dissipate our remaining powers, for a Gate draws power more than any illusion. And after all, most other worlds are hardly places one would take any pleasure in visiting. They have no society worthy of the nameЧonly mortals, and perhaps a uisge or kelpie here and there. The one to which I have traced Sybille's spirit is worse than most."
"You have traced her?"
Alianora frowned and glanced where the silken tapestries trembled. "Kieran is tactful," Berengar assured her. "He knew he was being sent away; he will remain in the outer hall until I call him back. And no one else will pass my page's guard."
"The power of the Stones, Berengar, is like a trail of stars to those who know how to see. That star-track leads through the paths of air and outside this realm. I have followed it and I have seen the world, even the place on that world where our power goes and is wasted upon mortals with no strength to use it" Alianora shuddered delicately. "It is a terrible world, Berengar. Pray that we are not called upon to follow Sybille's flight. My worst fear is that she will have been driven mad by her sufferings there, surrounded by mortals and iron-demons andЧ"
"Iron-demons?"
"You will see." Alianora regarded him thoughtfully. "Even in that world, there have been some mortals who sensed the existence of other realms. One of them dreamed us, and painted his dreams. I
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can use his dream-picture to open a Gate, and I can send dreams and callings to bring Sybille back, but I must have your permission."
"Mine? But, LadyЧOf course," Berengar caught himself up in midsentence. "The Stonemaids of die Garronais?"
"We have lost so many of the places of power, as mortals infringed upon our lands and as we lost the strength to use them aright. The Stone Circle of Fontevrault is now within the grounds of a Durandine monastery, and there is a mill belonging to the Count of the Vexin over the Falls of Mathilde. The Jinn have reclaimed their own places in Spain and Outremer, and I would rather ask a Durandine brother for help than confess to a jinni how weak we are grown here in EHhame; besides, they are inconveniently far away."
"There are two circles of standing stones upon the lands of Lord Yrthan."
"Who has his own ideas about the way to save Elfhame." An expression of distaste crossed Alianora's face, "I do not plan to marry again."
"N-no, my Lady. I mean, yes, my Lady." Berengar bent his knee briefly and remained with head bowed while Alianora outlined her plan to bring back Sybille and the power that had leaked out of the Middle Realm with her disappearance.
Some leagues away, in the Durandine monastery at Fontevrault, a circle of robed and hooded figures kept watch over a brass bowl filled with milky fluid. On the surface of the white liquid, shaken and trembling like figures in a dream, Alianora and Berengar appeared; the white fluid around them took on the semblance of silken tapestries, and their voices sounded like the tinny far-away calls of midnight demons. Behind the bowl, a monk skilled in mortal spells murmured ceaselessly and passed his hands
Margaret Ball
over and above the milky potion, keeping the image faintly within view of the others assembled there.
All wore the anonymous gray robes of the order, with hoods pulled low over their faces to maintain the mask of anonymity and equality commanded by the Rule of Saint Durand; but only one man dared speak and interrupt the chanting magic that kept the image in place.
"Enough, I think," he said. "We know their plans. It remains only to keep our own watch and ward over the Gate, and to make sure that we, and not this elfling child-Lord, receive the Lady Sybille when she passes into this realm again."
"If only we could pass through ourselves, and take the lady in this strange world to which she has fled!" exclaimed another.
The first speaker swung towards him. Face and hands and feet were covered in the hooded robe of the Order, but the lines of his body expressed impatience enough. "And how should we know her there? She has doubtless changed her shape a dozen times by now. The spells we craft here may not work there, or may work differently; it is surer and safer to let the elven lords call her back, if we can but catch her on the moment of return."
He gestured back towards the image, wavering for a minute with his interruption, but now taking on new clarity as the brother who changed the spells warmed again to his task. "And even if we could know the lady by sightЧwould you really want to go there? No, my brother. Trust those older and wiser than you in the evil ways of the elvenkind. They do not risk themselves in that world; neither need we. We as well as they can send dreams and imaginations; we as well as they can find those in the other world who are close to us in spirit. I have found such a one, and with his help we will draw the lady
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Sybille to us while this young effling is easily distracted elsewhere."
As he spoke, Alianora was showing Berengar the starry trail of power leaking out of the elven realms, and the world at the other side of the Void to which that trail led. The assembled Durandine monks peered at the milky reflection of that image and shuddered with distasteЧjust as did Berengar, looking into the spellcast mirror behind the tapestries of Alianora's council chamber. Opposed as they might be in most matters, the elvenkind and the Durandine monks were agreed on one thing: for, far better to call Sybille back by spells and charms than to enter this terrible world in their own bodies! Demons with bodies of iron rushed about narrow tracks, screaming threats at one another and every so often colliding with cries of agony. Stone towers as high as the sky entrapped mortals who did not even know the purpose of their servitude in these monstrous keeps. And other mortals, careless of their weak fleshy bodies, actually descended to the narrow tracks ruled by the iron-demons and hurled themselves before them. . . .
CHAPTER ONE
"I saw a great star most splendid and beautiful, and with it an exceeding multitude of failing sparks which with the star followed southward. And they examined him upon his throne almost as something hostile, and turning from him,, they sought rather the north. And suddenly they were all annihilated, being turned into black coals ... and cast into the abyss that I could see them no more."
ЧHildegard of Bingen
Lisa could have sworn she'd looked before crossing the street; but the car seemed to come out of nowhere, burning rubber as the wheels screeched around the corner. A horn blared in her ear and the driver of the convertible yelled something as she threw herself out of the way. Her foot slipped on the wet asphalt and she skated forwards. The papers in her hands shot upwards and out, dancing in a vagrant breeze and mixing with a flock of the green and silver butterflies that frequented the garden across
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the street. Lisa swore quietly and viciously, recovered her balance with one hand inches from the asphalt, and snatched at the papers whirling above the street. Somehow she retrieved them; the butterflies danced on their way; the blaring music from the car radio receded into the distance and Lisa made it across the street with her morning's work, if not her dignity, precariously salvaged.
"What are you doing, Lisa? Don't you know there's a bounty on pedestrians in Texas?" Judith Templeton called from the front steps of die New Age Psychic Research Center. Dressed for work in faded jeans and a Hot Tuna T-shirt, with her long blonde hair tied back with a shoestring, she looked like a time traveler on the deep, shady porch of the old house. "I knew the neighborhood would go to hell when they sold the Pennyfeather place to a fraternity. How did you manage to retrieve everything?"
"Just lucky, I guess." Lisa handed over her stack of Xeroxed papers and kept the originals to return to her own files. "Here you are, Dr. Templeton: copies of all Miss Penny's classes, contracts, and miscellaneous paperwork. Do you really think that's going to help you put the Center's business affairs onto a computer?"
"Probably not," Judith grinned. "The more I know about how my great-aunt has been running this place, the more confused I get. But the southern extended family is a wonderful and terrible thing. Dad would never forgive me if I didn't make one more try to rescue the Center before the creditors and the IRS descend on her."
"The what?"
"IRS. Internal Revenue Service." Judith glanced at Lisa and shook her head. "Come on, even you New Age types must occasionally have to interact with the real world. You do pay taxes on whatever
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