"L. Warren Douglas - The Veil of Years 3 - Isle Beyond Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglas L Warren)

Baen Books by L. Warren Douglas
Simply Human
The Sacred Pool
The Veil of Years
The Isle Beyond Time

Acknowledgments
Dave Feintuch, for reading and criticizing an early manuscript and making suggestions. Leo Frankowski,
for scathing criticism of the last chapters, as I had written them, and for thus saving the climax of the
trilogy, and saving Pierrette from unbearable guilt.

Alain Bonifaci and Nathalie Bernard, Hotel Cardinal, 24 Rue Cardinale, Aix-en-Provence, France,pour
une chambre jolie et confortable, et un gai "bonjour" chaque matin.And Alain, for thetarasque .

The French people for the preservation of so many antiquities among which we may, on certain magical
occasions, part the Veil of Years.

Sue, as always, for everything. Celeste Anne and Emma Sue, of course, just for being warm and furry.

Dedication
For Sue E. Folkringa, my wife, my friend and companion on all the trails and byways of
Provence, and wherever else the endless quest may lead us.



Part One тАФ Dusk
Prologue
The land is vast and ancient, and has many faces. Once it was Gaul, center of the Celtic lands that
stretched from Anatolia to Hibernia, linked by a common ancestry, a single speech, and by the
machinations of its scholarly caste, thedruidae .
Already, in the days of Our Lord, it had fragmented. Gauls spoke Latin, Gaels Celtic, and Galatians
Greek. They all worshipped gods with different names. Only when they accepted Christianity was there a
new commonality within the Celtic realm.


Now, eight centuries later, northern Gaul is called Francia, and is ruled by a coarse Germanic king. East
is Burgundia, west the Occitain lands, and here is Provence, my own sunny country. All exist beneath the
Frankish mantle.


But names and kingdoms are deceptive; beneath the differences beats an ancient heart, and the
rhythmically surging blood of the land is not Germanic alone, but Roman, Greek, Phoenician, and Celtic.
Here and there are currents of an earlier strain, too, a small dark-haired people sprung from the earth
itself, from dirt, rock, and the waters of the sacred pools.


This is a tale of a woman of that old blood, a devotee ofMa , the most ancient goddess of mountain
springs and forest pools, from whose name come words for breast, for female horse, and for mother. It is
the tale of the last priestess of the most ancient faith, whom the unenlightened call a sorceress.