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

 - Chapter 2

"Never mind," Cado said, seeing the spreading stain on Elen's garment. "She's dead."

"Where are the whelps?" the other man said againтАФa harsh devil-face, Cado saw, one that ordinarily
belonged to Jules, a carpenter who repaired boats.

The other villagers crowded around the inert masc. "They didn't pass us," someone muttered uneasily.

Otho, last to arrive, bearing his holy bones, pushed through the huddle. He knelt, and gently closed
Elen's staring eyes.

He arose.

The gens backed away, and none would meet his bleak, baleful gaze.

"Murderers," he grated. "Would you kill the children too?"

Those who could, slipped away. Among them were Cado, Jules, and the others who had wielded clubs.
Otho lingered, alone with Elen for the last time. At last he covered her battered face, and headed down
the narrow defile.

From the shadow of the shallow cave, the two children had heard enough to fear their mother was dead.
Marie spun away, covering her face. Little Pierrette stood like chiseled stone, unwilling to turn from her
dismay. . . .

And then she saw . . . him . . . just within the cave.

His hair was white as moonlight, yet his face was a boy's. It had a stiff little nose, and lips like those of
the tumbled Eros marble half-buried inside the ruined walls of a Roman edifice. Violet eyes seemed to
glow from within, like none Pierrette had seen, in that land where most were brown or black.

His ears were huge. They wiggled.

"You may laugh," he said. "It doesn't bother me." His voice was youthful, yet hauntingly familiar, with
inflections like Elen'sтАФwho had grown up speaking the old Ligure tongue.

"They'll hear you," Pierrette whispered, her eyes shifting toward the cave mouth behind the strange
apparition. He laughed, a sound that carried echoes of tiny bells. Moonlight wafted over his clothing.
Pierrette gasped.

His garmentsтАФa puffy moon-white shirt, green pantaloons, and floppy-toed shoesтАФall seemed to be
made of willow leaves. Or were they feathers? The shirt glowed like nacre, the short trousers like


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 - Chapter 2

magpie feathers, first russet, then azure, then green. "They'll hear only the sighing of wind among the
pine needles," he said. "They'll see only moonbeams and the flicker of a bat. Not me, and not you."