"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 1 - Black Sun Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

C. S. Friedman




Black Sun Rising
This book is for several very special readers:
Rick Umbaugh, who started it all; Kellie Owens, Linda Gilbert, Lori Cook, David
McDonald, and Joe and Regina Harley, who keep it going; and Betsy Wollheim,
whose criticism is, as always, worth its weight in gold.
The author would like to thank the following people for their insight, inspiration,
and/or vital emotional support during this novelтАЩs formative period: Jeanne
Boyle, Adam Breslaw, Christian Cameron, Tom Deitz, Nancy Friedman, Bob
Green, John Happ, Delos Wheeler, Karen Martakos, Robin Mitchell, Steve
Rappaport, Vicki Sharp, Mike Stevens, Sarah Strickland, Mark Sunderlin, and
Glenn Zienowicz.
 Prologue

She wondered why she was afraid to go home.
She was within sight of the castle now, and its proximity should have calmed
her. She loved the traditional building which her husband had designed, and all
the men and women who lived inside it. The seat of the Neocounty of Merentha
was a gleaming, ivory-colored monument to the Revivalist dream: all the
elements of Gothic perpendicular architecture that seemed so oppressive
elsewhere - at the royal seat, for instance - were here combined by that unerring
aesthetic sense that was her husbandтАЩs strongest attribute, to create a building
that was at once a soaring display of stone arches and finials, and a very real,
very comfortable home.
For a moment she reined up her unhorse, commanding it to stillness, and
tried to focus on the source of her anxiety. As ever, the effort was doomed to
failure. She wished she had her husbandтАЩs skill to name and analyze such
feelings. He would have taken one look at the building and said there, you see?
The demonlings are out early tonight, itтАЩs their presence you sense. Or, the
currents are unsteady tonight, of course youтАЩre nervous. Or some other
explanation, equally dependent upon his special vision, that would render up the
source of her discomfort in small, comprehensible packets of knowledge, so that
it might be dealt with and then discarded.
The sun had set. Maybe that was it. The piercing white sun which bathed the
land in sanity was gone, and the Core had followed it into its westerly grave.
Only a few stars remained, and soon they too would be swallowed up by
darkness. Things were abroad now that hid from the light of day, maverick
human fears that had taken on a life of their own and coursed the night in
search of a bodily home. She looked up at the sky and shivered.
Even ErnaтАЩs moons were missing now, two having already set and one, the
smallest, yet to rise. Soon there would be as much darkness as the Earthlike
world could ever know. A true night, her husband would have called it. A very
rare, very special occurrence, for a world near the heart of the galaxy.
A night of power.
She kneed her unhorse gently into motion again and tried to lose herself in
memories of her family, as a means of combatting the uneasiness that had been