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

home with their baskets full of plump fish, the image of the
dead fish caught in the current flashed into his mind's eye and
filled him with a troubling forebodingЧonly he did not know
why.

THE quiet that pervaded the inner court of the palace of Wer-
aushausen had such a soothing effect, combined with the
heat of the sun, that Liath drowsed on the stone bench where
she waited even though she wasn't tired. Fears and hopes
mingled to become a tangled dream: Da's murder, Hugh, the
curse of fire, Hanna's loyalty and love, Ivar's pledge, the
shades of dead elves, Lord Alain and the friendship he had
offered her, the death of Bloodheart, Sister Rosvita and The
Book of Secrets, daimones hunting her and, more vivid than
all the others, the tangible memory of Sanglant's hair caught
in her fingers there by the stream where he had scoured away
the filth of his captivity.

She started up heart pounding; she was hot, embarrassed,
dismayed, and breathless with hope all at once.

She could not bear to think of him because she wanted only to
think of him. A bee droned past. The gardener who weeded in
the herb garden had moved to another row. No one had come
to summon her. She did not know how much longer she would
have to wait.

She walked to the well with its shingled roof and whitewashed
stone rim. The draft of air rising from the depths smelled of
fresh water and damp stone. The deacon who cared for the
chapel here had told her that a spring fed the wells; before the
coming of the Daisanite fraters to these lands a hundred years
ago its source had rested hidden in rocks and been
worshiped as a goddess by the heathen tribes. Now a stone
cistern contained it safely beneath the palace.

Was that the glint of water in the depths? if she looked hard
enough with her salamander eyes, would she see in that
mirror the face of the man she would marry, as old
herbwomen claimed? Or was that only pagan superstition, as
the church mothers wrote?

She drew back, suddenly afraid to see anything, and stepped
out from the shadow of the little roof into the blast of the
noonday sun.

"/ will never love any man but him." Was it that pledge which
had bound her four days ago in the circle of stones where
she'd crossed through an unseen gateway and ridden into
unknown lands? Had she really been foolish enough to turn