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

"What is it?"
"CloseЧthe book?"
Instead he took the opened book from her hands, holding it up to let the light from the bay window fell on the picture. "Now look at that," he marveled. "Looks completely different by afternoon light, doesn't it? You'd almost think it was a different picture now. Fascinating..."
With the picture no longer before her eyes, Lisa could move again. She closed the book with a snap and ignored Mahluli's howl of protest at treating his prized first edition so roughly. "We don't have time for that now," she said. "We have to make plans. Get
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the others in here. I have to tell you what's happened. ..."
The worst thing was that even while she explained the Simmons disaster to Mahluli and Cinevra and Johnny Z., even while the memory of the storm-scene chilled her inside, she still wanted to open the book and look at the picture again. The craving was a constant ache within her, and no amount of reminding herself of real problems in the real world could take her mind off the menacing storm clouds in that imaginary world.
CHAPTER TWO
Let no one be surprised at what we are about to relate, for it was common gossip up and down the countryside that after February 6th many people both saw and heard a whole pack of huntsmen in full cry. They straddled black horses and black bucks while their hounds were pitch black with staring hideous eyes. This was seen in the very deer park of Peterborough town, and in all the woods stretching from that same spot as far as Stamford. All the night monks heard them sounding and winding their horns.
ЧAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1127 A.D.
A wind howled down out of the north and the clouds of the summer thunderstorm swirled about the circle of standing stones in the forest of the Carronais, darkening the sky and sending drops of rain pattering down on the stiff green needles of the trees around the circle. Within die circle, and above it, the sky remained clear and bright; sun sprinkled
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the floor of green moss and played over the smooth
gray surfaces of die Stonemaidens.
Just beyond that circle, where the path through the forest ended, a high pointed arch rose to mark the entrance to the circle. It was elven work, centuries old and uncountable centuries younger than the Stonemaidens themselves; stone raised and pierced and pointed like a palace of light, designed so that the first rays of the rising sun should pour through it and give the arch the illusion of being carved from light itself. Now, at noon, it was only an arch, and the boy who had been looking through it since dawn had long since felt his expectant wonder fade away into simple boredom. Even the vague distorted glimpse of another realm had ceased to hold his attention; most of the time there was only a gray haze to be seen, and the occasional views of a shadowy book-lined room had become dull through repetition. He had been hoping to see a dragon or a demon or something that might justify the loathing with which Berengar spoke of this other realm.
The lazy noontime heat baked into his bones, tempting him to slumber. He gave a bone-cracking yawn, sleepily hauled himself to his feet and went a few paces away to wash his face in the cold waters of the stream. Before he knelt, he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that the one for whom he waited had not appeared; then, yawning again, he plunged his whole face into the bubbling cool water and blew a string of bubbles to startle the fishes.
It was in that moment of play and inattention that the thunderstorm closed in, clouds and rain and darkness moving preternaturally fast behind the driving lash of that northern wind. Kieran started up from the stream when he felt the pattering of raindrops on his back. Automatically one hand traced the pattern of warding, and the next raindrops were deflected by his personal shielding. He no longer felt
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the wet wind against his cheeks, but he could still hear the creaking of the trees around him and the high keening of the storm-wind in the sky above. If the storm grew a little heavier it would break through the light warding he had set; he was too young to have full use of his elven powers, and the task of guarding against wind and rain and falling branches all at once would be quite beyond him.
Beyond the arch, the circle defined by the leaning shapes of the Stonemaidens was bright and sunny. Kieran looked toward it with longing. If only he could take refuge there until the storm had passed! But he had been strictly warned against that. Now that the Gate had been prepared, any of the elvenkind entering the circle might find themselves drawn without warning into that other world that Alianora had shown his lord. Curiosity tempted Kieran, butЧwhat if the tales of iron-demons and such were true?
His musings had distracted him from the gathering fury of the storm. As he'd expected, the wind and rain together were growing too strong for his shielding. Already fat drops of rain were splashing on the surface of his moonwoven cloak; soon enough even that elixnade stuff would be soaked through. Kieran drew the hood up over his head and told himself not to be a baby. A wetting wouldn't hurt him, not like stumbling into the world of the iron-demons would, and he wasn't a child to be terrified by the strange howling of the wind that drove the stormЧ
Howling, yes. But not of wind. Kieran's head jerked upwards and he froze for a moment as he listened to the long drawn-out cries that echoed on the wind, followed by the sound of a distant horn.
"The Wild Hunt!" he whispered. He knew the sound well enough, but it did not belong to the day. The Hunt rode on moonless nights when the storm-clouds were low in the sky: a dark shadow across the moon, the baying of ghostly hounds whose eyes glowed
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in transparent shadow-feces, an army of the dead out to capture new souls. Mortals feared Herluin, the One who Rides, and his army of the dead; their folk-tales reached back to the ancient days before elfiords and churchlords had joined together to bind Herluin into the darkness, when his hounds could tear mortal flesh and his horn could call mortal souls out to run forever in the Wild Hunt. Of late there had been whispers that those days were coming back; strange tales came from the east, rumors of villages deserted and fields gone unharvested. None had yet been taken from the Garronais, but the silver horn of Herluin had been sounding all too often in moonless nightsЧand now die Hunt was out at noon, a noon that the summer storm was making almost as dark as night.
He should have guessed. A natural storm would have swept through the circle of the Stonemaidens as easily as through die rest of the forest. Only a spellcast wind would .have been halted at the boundaries of the standing stonesЧas would the One Who Rides and the rest of his ghostly army, as would all created things not akin to die elvenldnd or those they called to join them. Beyond the arch, Kieran would be safe from die ghost-hounds, if not from the iron-demons of die other world; and there was no question which he feared more. He took two steps forward, then stopped, trembling with the conflict between fear and duty.
He was of elven blood. What would the Hounds want with him? They hunted soulsЧand the Church had long since decreed that the elvenkind were without souls. The cold music of the silver horn frightened him, but at least he had no soul to lose to Herluin. But there were others who were not so safe. The village of St.-Remy was only a few miles distant, in the direct path of the storm. The villagers would have been bringing in their scanty harvest
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when the clouds rolled overhead; now they would be cursing the coming rain and working to save what they could before the storm flattened the fields, and thinking of little else. They had never known the Hunt to ride by day; it was a thing of the night. They would not be expecting it. Their mortal ears would not have the keenness to pick up the sounds of hounds and horn many leagues away, as Kieran's had done.
He might be able to get there in time to warn them. The Hunt might not pay any attention to him. The villagers of St.-Remy were under Berengar's protection, and Berengar was Kieran's lord and also his god, the elven lord who had rescued him from storm and starvation and his own impotent anger, who had given him a place in the world and had taught him how to make the most of his burgeoning elven powers.
There was no choice.
Kieran cast one last look at the safe sunlit world within the circle and then took to his heels, following the path beside the stream. Along the stream until it sank between cliffs to join die River Garron, then across Forty Thieves Field, Black Ewe Paddock, and between the two great oaksЧhe knew die way to St.-Remy as well as die way to his own chamber. As he ran, his lips formed the words for a speedspell he was not supposed to know yet, and his feet rose until he was just skimming die path, running on air and flying almost as fast as die oncoming storm.
At die first sight of clouds, die men in the fields worked even harder and fester than they had been doing. Stripped to the waist, sweating under die summer sun, diey labored to bring in dieir harvest before rain flattened the fields, and while they worked diey muttered prayers to avert the speeding thunderclouds. When die sky darkened, dieir women
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joined them in the last desperate attempt to save the grain. They worked beside the men, old wives and young girls, skirts kilted up above the knee, bodices tight to their bodies with sweat. Already drops of rain were mingling with the sweat that fell from die laborers, and the hot summer afternoon was chilled by the wind out of the north. The villagers shouted and cursed and prayed and panted, and no one heard anything out of the ordinary in the wind that whistled above them.
"Send for priest," Arn of the Bridge commanded his crippled daughter. Maud had been limping around the fields with dippers of cool water to slake the thirst of the able-bodied men. "Tell him to bring cross out o' church and hold it up. Maybe Our Lord will stand between us and the storm."
" 'A won't come," the girl reported a few moments later. " 'A's locked self in die church, praying, and shouted to me through the window-slit that us had best get within doors before the storm hits."
Arn took a long drink of water and spat dust and grime out, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "What's a wetting to us? It's t'winter's food I'm worried about. What'll us eat then if us hides inside while rain takes the crop?" It was a rhetorical question; before Maud could have answered, he had dropped the dipper back in her bucket and bent again to his task.
After a moment's thought, Maud set her bucket down by the edge of the field and followed behind her father, twisting the stalks of grain into sheaves so that he could spend all his time cutting. Let the men and women of the village walk over to the bucket themselves, if they wanted a drink; she and Arn were the only ones to bring in their share of the crop, and he couldn't spare her at a time like this. Nor could she spare herself. Over and over she bent to scoop up the stalks in her left arm, stood to bind
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diem togedier widi a twist of grass, stooped to set die completed sheaf upright where diey could collect it when they gave up reaping for the day. The repeated motion turned die constant ache in her malformed hip into a living fire, but there was no time to diink about diat. Bend, stand, twist, stoop; bend, stand, twist, stoop. She followed behind Arn and tried to diink of nodiing else but die task in front of her nose.
She succeeded so well that she almost bumped diat nose into Arn's broad back where he stood at die end of die row, sickle drooping in his hand. "WhatЧ?" Maud began. Then she saw the elf-boy where he had burst out of die forest. Chest heaving, he was down on one knee, red and sweating and scraped from fells like any mortal lad, and die silver-bright hair diat framed his pointed face was dark with sweat. But he had still enough breath to gasp out a warning to die startled villagers.
"The Hunt is up! Get inside, for your souls!"
"Lord Berengar hunting?" Arn said slowly. "Nay, lad, on a day like this he'd be overwatching die harvesters on his demesne fields, wouldn't he?"
Kieran pointed up at die clouds racing by overhead. "Fools." All die customary scorn of die elvenkind for dull, slow, plodding mortals was in his voice; but there was also a note of fear diat began to strike responsive sparks among die weary villagers. "Can't you hear? It s die Wild Hunt."
"Not by day!" protested a woman in the back of die gathering crowd.