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

"Oc," said Elen, satisfied, as the moon again withdrew its face. Her spell had come from the fairy
Guihen generations past: Guihen the invisible, who stroked his white hen and disappeared at will.
Guihen the Ligure, who righted wrongs and won the daughter of a dux as reward, and a Roman villa,
and a chest of gold. She watched her hands fade to invisibility as the moon disappeared.

The footsteps on the trail were quick and light, no heavy farmer's tread, but Elen did not dare raise her
face from the curtain of her dark hair until she heard one pursuer speak.

"Look! It's Mama's sash." Appalled, the masc recognized her eldest daughter, Marie. "She must be near.
See? She dropped it on the path to the cape."

"The Eagle's Beak? Will the gens follow her there?" That was Pierrette, her second child.

Elen's heart sank.

"Let's trick them," suggested Marie. "I'll move the sash to the other branch of the trail, and they'll think
she fled east."

Marie and Pierrette had outdistanced the townsfolk. They would "save" her by undoing her own
deception. Elen was torn between bidding them leave the sash and remaining hidden. Once undone,
Guihen's spell would be difficult to renew. Magic failed oftener than not, or took strange turns.

***

Otho's knees ached on the unyielding stone. Tonight, his prayers took strange form, a reminiscence of a
time that he held close in his heart. . . .

That summer, he had been but thirteen. Elen had been a year older, a dark forest sprite tiny as the fairies
from whom her ancient folk had sprung. She had been to Otho a fairy indeed, and he had fallen in love


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 - Chapter 1

with her by the tiny spring her folk held sacred, the Goddess's breast from which they drank. The day he
met her, Otho had hiked miles in search of game for his father's table, and the water in his leather pouch
was warm, stale, and sour. When the dark-eyed wood spirit had offered him water fresh from the rock,
in a clean beechwood cup, he had drunk greedily, and had fallen utterly under her enchantment.

In truth, the spell had been his own, sprung not from the waters but from the life that pulsed in his groin.
Similar magic had flowed in the girl, unchecked by Christian inhibition.

That summer his hunting trips all took him near the Mother's breast, and he never again carried his water
pouch. He felt the urge to hunt whenever he felt the swelling of his maleness in the heat of the summer
nights, as often as his heart and mind sweetened with the memory of dark eyes, lithe limbs, and the
warmth between them.

But summer did not last forever. Even before the last leaves fell from the oaks, before the mossy ground
grew too chill for revels with the Goddess's child, his brothers discovered the game he hunted. His father