"Diane Duane - Tales Of The Five 2 - The Door Into Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW




THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
DIANE DUANE
The Wound is healed
by the sword that deals it;

the heart is knit
by the pain that breaks it;

the life is made whole

by the death that starts it;

the death is made whole

by the life that ends it.
(Hamartics, 186)




Four lands hemmed in by mountain and waste and the SeaтАФthose were the Middle Kingdoms: and the greatest of them, Arlen and Darthen, were in peril
of destruction. For seven years Arlen's throne had been empty of the royalty needed to keep the land fertile and the people at peace. And Darthen
suffered as a result of Arlen's lack, for the Two Lands were bound together by oaths of friendship and by joint maintenance of the royal sorceries that
kept their lands safe from the ever-present menace of the Shadow.
In those days there appeared a man with the blue FireтАФnot just the spark of Flame that every man and woman possesses, but enough to channel and
use to change the world around him. His lover was the child of Arlen's last king, heir to his usurped throne. In the Firebearer's relationship to Freelorn,
King Ferrant's son, many later saw the Goddess's hand. She had been working quietly, so as not to alarm Her old adversary the Shadow.
Her hand seemed visible elsewhere too. Freelorn had taken com-panions with him into his exile. They lived as outlaws and bandits, stealing what they
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needed when they had toтАФthough none of their hearts were in it. One of them in particular would certainly have been elsewhere, if she had had a
choice. Swordswoman and sorcer-ess, trained in the Silent Precincts and in every other place in the Kingdoms that dealt in the use and mastery of the
blue Fire that some women bear, Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi was a spectacu-lar and expensive failure. She had the Fire in prodigious quantity, and
couldn't focus it. On her way home from one more school that couldn't do anything for her, chance threw her together with Free-lorn's people one night.
Bitterly frustrated with what seemed a wasted life, desperately needing something useful to do, Segnbora swore fealty that night to the rightful heir of the
Arlene throne, and fled with him and his people into the eastern Waste where Free-lorn's loved, Herewiss, awaited him.

The children of House tai-Enraesi traditionally had a talent for getting themselves into dangerous situations. There in the Waste, in an ancient pile built
by no human handтАФa fortress rising gray and bizarre out of the empty land, skewed and blind-walled and omi-nousтАФshe started wondering whether
even the tai-Enraesi luck would do her any good. There were stories about this place, about soul-eating monsters that guarded innumerable doors into
Other-wheres. Even the mildest of the stories were gruesome. Fear gripped her, but her oath gripped her harder. She stayed with Freelorn and his
people.
And there in the Hold, fulfilling her fears, the stories she had heard came trueтАФeven the one of how nothing good would come out of this terrible place
until (ridiculous improbability) a male should focus his Fire.
On the night Herewiss declared his intention to use his newly gained Fire to replace Freelorn on his throne, Segnbora lay in the darkness and considered