"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 02 - The Dragon Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Having done so, however, he became unexpectedly aware of a feeling of uneasiness in his bones
concerning both James and Angela-but James, in particular. The feeling had not been there a second
before, and he turned his full attention upon it, being a wolf who had learned to pay heed to the signals his
undersenses sent him.

But the uneasiness neither explained itself, nor disappeared. Sniffing the air and scenting nothing amiss,
he accordingly dismissed it, making only a mental note to mention it at the first opportunity to S.
Carolinus; the next time he found himself passing close to that magicianтАЩs cottage, up by the Tinkling
Water. Carolinus would be able to tell if the feeling portended anything Aargh might need to bestir himself
personally about; though it was hard to imagine what anything like that could be.

Putting the matter sensibly from his mind, therefore, he trotted on; and his lean dark form swiftly
disappeared from the view of the hedgehogs, much to their relief, seeming to vanish all at once among the
underbrush and tree trunks of the wakening woods.
Chapter Two

James Eckert, now Sir James, Baron de Bois de Malencontri, etc.-though he seldom felt like he really
was-awoke in the dawn gloom of the bedchamber he occupied with this wife, Angela, in the Castle de
Bois de Malencontri.

Pale slivers of light, showing around the edges of the heavy curtains obscuring the scandalous glazed
window of the room, signaled that dawn was at hand. Beside him, under the small mountain of furs and
bedcovers that made the unheated stony-walled room bearable, Angie breathed steadily in sleep.

Caught in that odd state that lies between slumber and full awakedness, Jim tried to ignore whatever it
was that had woken him. He had a vague sensation of things not quite right, a sort of hangover of the
sense of general depression that had been clinging to him the past few dreary weeks. It was a feeling
something like the oppressiveness felt by anyone when a storm is just over the horizon and headed his
way.

In the last few weeks he had found himself coming close to regretting his decision to stay in this world of
dragons, magic, and medieval institutions, instead of returning himself and Angie to the drabber but more
familiar world of twentieth-century Earth-wherever in the regions of overlapping probability it might now
be.

Contributing, no doubt, to this feeling was the season itself. It was at last the end of a winter that had
been stimulating at first; but which had finally seemed to drag on endlessly, with its early twilights, its
guttering torches and candles, its icy walls.

Affairs of business to do with the barony he had gained from Sir Hugh de Bois de Malencontri, the
previous Baron, had been relentlessly concerning Jim lately. There were buildings and roads to be
mended; several hundred serfs, freemen and retainers who looked to him for direction; and all the
necessary making of plans for this yearтАЩs planting. The heavy total of these duties had turned this strange
other world about him into a place just about as dull and workaday as the remembered twentieth-century
Earth, itself.

Accordingly, JimтАЩs first impulse now was to close his eyes, bury his head under the covers, and push
himself back into sleep, leaving whatever had wakened him behind. But when he tried this, sleep refused
to return. The sense of something being wrong kept growing until it clamored at last all through him, like a