"Cherryh,.C.J.-.Morgaine.4.-.1988.-.Exiles.Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cherryh C J)

. and found the Gates.

Men had been there before . . . having been victims of the qhal and therefore
involved in the ruin; Men looked into the Gates, and feared what they saw, the
power and the desolation. A hundred went out those Gates, both male and female,
a mission with no return. There could only be forward for them; they must seal
the Gates from the far side of time, one and the next and the next, destroying
them, unweaving the deadly web the qhal had woven . . . to the very Ultimate
Gate or the end of time.
World after world they sealed . . . but their numbers declined, and their lives
grew strange, stretched over millennia of real-time. Few of them survived of the
second and third generations, and some of those went mad.
Then they began to despair, for all their struggle seemed hopeless: one Gate
omitted anywhere across the web would begin it all again; one Gate, anywhen
misused, could bring down on them the ruin of all they had ever done and make
meaningless all their sacrifice.
In their fear they created a weapon, indestructible save by the Gates which
powered it: a thing for their own protection, and containing all the knowledge
they had ever gained of the GatesЧa doomsday force against that paradoxical
Ultimate Gate, beyond which was no passage at allЧor a truth worse than all
their nightmares.
They were five when that dreadful Weapon was made.
There was one who survived to carry it.

Chapter One




Vision of horses, one gray and shadow, one star-white, both shod for war . . .
one dark rider, one pale, across void and nightЧ

*

In gray lines, horses and riders appear along the river-ridge, concealed in mist
and the uncertainties of dawn. Weapons bristle up, lower, all in one nightmare
movement of the charge. It is ambush, and below them, humans ride along the
sedge-rimmed river, Ichandren's men, their weapons laid across saddlebows.
Ichandren looks up aghast at the first thin shout, the thunder that comes down
on them in morning mist, the hedge of weapons that materializes out of the fog.
The promised truce is broken, the valley has become a trap into which shadowy
riders pour off either slope.
"Back!" Ichandren yells, wheeling his horse about.
The hindmost of his men shriek and die, pierced by lances, and the riderless
horses splash along the reed-edged banks. The mist is full of shadows, shadows
of enemies, of human riders fleeing in confusion, small bands battling in
isolation. Even sound is distorted, echo mingling with present orders, screams
and the clash of weapons ringing off the hills.
Some attempt retreat; but other shadows come pouring out of the mist behind, and
horns sound in wild confusion. Ichandren shouts orders, but there is no relief,