"L. Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years 1 - The Sacred Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglas L Warren)

Chapter 1 - The Masc
The moon shone bright upon the ancient stones of Citharista, lighting young Marius's dash to the chapel.
"P'er Otho! Pater!" he shouted. "Come quickly. The gens are pursuing the witch Elen onto the rocks.
Bring the Sancta. Come!" He had to stop, to take breath.

Father Otho rose from his knees, his face more drawn and angry than the boy's unseemly babbling could
account for.

Marius shrank back, averting his eyes from the priest, and from the reliquary where the holy bones lay,
in their tiny gabled house of gilt cedar encrusted with garnets and gold. He did not understand Otho's
anger, because he was too young to remember the revelation of the saint's remains, or to know what was
between the priest and the woman who fled.

***

The moaning Latin chant was a distant dragon growling up the winding path from Citharista. Villagers'
torches curled like a glowing serpent from among red-tiled houses and Roman warehouses.

The fleeing masc's eyes, wide with terror, reflected the red and gold of serpentine flames, and when she
turned her head toward the dark, wooded path, she stumbled, blinded by torchlight. The roots of twisted
cypresses tripped her, slowing her headlong flight. Her twisted ankle felt as if a knife blade pried
between the bones.

The moon had withdrawn its light. Had she angered the Goddess, begging for a male child to quicken in
her womb? Had the Virgin Huntress abandoned her to that other Virgin, whose torchbearers even now
drew close?

She drew her skirts about her knees and stumbled onward in darkness and pain. A refuge lay ahead, the
old Saracen fort at the tip of the cape. There dwelled the magus Anselm. The Christian villagers would
not pursue her within those wallsтАФbut she did not think she could reach them in time.

Pressing on, she fended off stiff, scrubby oak branches grown malevolently hard and sharp, branches
that clawed at her eyes as she passed. Abruptly the moon emerged from behind its veil. The path
branched. One trail ran south to the cape, another eastward across the headland, where cliffs plunged a
thousand feet to the sea.


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 - Chapter 1


She let her sash drop on the southbound trail, then hid in the feathery shadow of a tamarisk bush. If the
villagers reached the fort without finding her, they would believe her already safe within. Then, later,
she would limp around to the fort by a goat path.

"Cado! Wait!" she heard a distant villager call. "We'll never catch a masc here by the sea, where the old
devils rule. Wait for Marius to come with the priest and Sancta Clara's bones." The witch smiled then.
Father Otho would not come. The gens, townsfolk, would wait, but young Marius would return alone.
Otho would not allow his saint's relic to be so ill-used.