"Brooks - Heritage 3 - The Elf Queen of Shannara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

enfold them all, and to wrap them away forever.
She stood stiffly as a hot breeze blew over her, ruffling the
fine linen of her clothing. She was tall, her body angular and
long limbed. The bones of her face were prominent, shaping
features that were instantly recognizable. Her cheekbones were
high, her forehead broad, and her jaw sharp-edged and smooth
beneath her wide, thin mouth. Her skin was drawn tight against
her face, giving her a sculpted look. Flaxen hair tumbled to her
shoulders in thick, unruly curls. Her eyes were a strange, pierc-
ing blue and always seemed to be seeing things not immediately
apparent to others. She seemed much younger than her fifty-
odd years. When she smiled, which was often, she brought
smiles to the faces of others almost effortlessly.
She was not smiling now. It was late, well after midnight,
and her weariness was like a chain that would not let her go.
She could not sleep and had come to walk in the Gardens, to
listen to the night, to be alone with her thoughts, and to try to
find some small measure of peace. But peace was elusive, her
thoughts were small demons that taunted and teased, and the
night was a great, hungering black cloud that waited patiently
for the moment when it would at last extinguish the frail spark
of their lives.
Fire, again. Fire to give life and fire to snuff it out. The image
whispered at her insidiously.
She turned abruptly and began walking through the Gar-
dens. Cort trailed behind her, a silent, invisible presence. If she
bothered to look for him, he would not be there. She could
picture him in her mind, a small, stocky youth with incredible
quickness and strength. He was one of the Home Guard, pro-
tectors of the Elven rulers, the weapons that defended them, the
lives that were given up to preserve their own. Cort was her
shadow, and if not Cort, then Dal. One or the other of them
was always there, keeping her safe. As she moved along the
pathway, her thoughts slipped rapidly, one to the next. She felt
the roughness of the ground through the thin lining of her slip-
pers. Arborlon, the city of the Elves, her home, brought out of
the Westland more than a hundred years ago-here, to this .
She left the thought unfinished. She lacked the words to
complete it.
Elven magic, conjured anew out of faerie time, sheltered the
city, but the magic was beginning to fail. The mingled fragrances
of the Garden's flowers were overshadowed by the acrid smells
of Killeshan's gases where they had penetrated the outer barri-
er of the Keel. Night birds sang gently from the trees and cov-
erings, but even here their songs were undercut by the guttural
sounds of the dark things that lurked beyond the city's walls in
the jungles and swamps, that pressed up against the Keel, wait-
ing.
The monsters.
The trail she followed ended at the northern most edge of