"Elliott,.Kate.-.Crown.Of.Stars.3.-.Burning.Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elliott Kate)

But as she drew breath to shout a warning to them in turn, light
flashed to her right, and beyond the road where the ground
swelled up to make a neat little tumulus, fire flashed and
beckoned from a shadowy ring of standing stones.

An owl glided past, so close that her horse shied away right-
ward, breaking off the road. She needed no more urging than
that. With her bow in one hand and the reins in the other, she
let the horse have its head. It jumped a low ditch to reach the
grassy slope that marked the tumulus. From the road, men
shouted after her.

A moment later she heard screaming.

The horse took the slope with the speed of a creature fleeing
fire, and yet it was fire that greeted them in the center of the
tiny stone circle: seven small stones, two of them fallen, one
listing. And in the center stood an eighth stone as tall as a man
of middling height; it burned with a blue-white fire that gave off
no heat.

The shrieking from the road turned into garbled noises that no
human ought to be able to utter. She dared not look behind.
Ahead, the owl settled with uncanny grace onto the top of ,
and the horse leapedЧ

She shouted with surprise as blue-white flame flared all
around her. Her horse landed, shied sideways, and stopped.

With reins held taut and the horse quiet under her, Liath stared
around the clearing: beaten earth, a layer of yellowing scrub
brush, and thin forest cover made up of small-leafed oak as
well as trees she had never seen before. But her voice failed
her when the man sitting on a rock rose to examine her with
interest. Not a human man, by any measure: with his bronze-
tinted skin and beardless face and his person decorated with
all manner of beads and feathers and shells and polished
stones, he was of another kinship entirely. Humans named his
kind Aoi, "the Lost Ones," the ancient elvish kin who had long
sinced vanished from thecities and paths trodden by
humanity.

But she knew him, and he knew her.

"You have come," he said. "Sooner than I expected. You
must) hide until the procession has passed, or I cannot speak
for what judgment the council will pass on you and your
presence here. Come now, dismount and give me the horse."

He looked no different than in the vision seen through fire,!