"Debra Doyle & James D. MacDonald - School of Wizardry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doyle Debra)

I'm late again, he thought. Walter's already gone.
He hurried out the door and down the stairs. Nobody in the
great hall stopped him or even seemed to notice him. He walked
out into the courtyard. The ground inside the walls lay empty
under the bright morning sun, and the castle stood open.
Without really knowing why, Randal went through the gate and
down to the meadows below.
He didn't go far; only to a low, grassy hill in a field close by
the castle. He climbed to the top of the little hill, and lay there
looking up at the clear blue sky.
A rumble of sound caught his attention. Faint, but distinct,
he could hear it: the noise of many hooves galloping. He sat up
and turned to look in the direction of the sound. Far in the
distance, a group of horsemen were riding toward him, their
banners making bright patches of color against the emerald
green of the land.
Randal felt panic rising up to choke him. The riders are
coming for me, he thought. I know they 're coming for me. If he
stayed on top of the hill, they'd spot him ... if they hadn't seen
him already.

He started down the side of the hill. A second later he
stumbled backward, his head ringing. He couldn't see the wall
that he'd slammed into, but he could feel it, rough stone
beneath his fingers. There was no top to it, or none that he
could reach even by jumping. There was no gap in it, either; he
followed it by touch all the way around the top of the hill.

Panicked, he sank to his knees, his hands pressing outward
against the invisible barrier. They mustn't find me, he thought.
I have to find a way out. No way through the wall, no way
overтАФI'll have to crawl under it.

He began tearing up clumps of grass from the springy turf,
scooping at the soft earth, digging away as fast as he could at
the dirt under the unseen wall One finger caught on a buried
rock; his nail tore and started to bleed. Outside the wall, the
hoof-beats sounded like thunder. Randal pulled the jagged rock
free of the dark loam and kept on digging....

Then, with a gasp, he woke a second time, and lay shivering
in the gray light that comes just before dawn. On the other
side of the room, Walter lay snoring.

It was a dream, he realized. But what kind of dream? What
did it mean? He got up and hurried to the castle gate.

"Has anything happened since last night?" Randal called out
to the guard on duty.