"Robert Jordan - The Wheel of Time 04 - The Shadow Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

shoulders, and her dress, plain blue except for narrow bands of white Jaerecuz lace at neck and wrists,
would have suited the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, wearing her feastday best to the Tower just like
the other women approaching the wide stairs. Min hoped she looked the same, at least. She had to stop
herself from staring at them to see if they walked or held themselves differently.I can do it , she told
herself.

She had certainly not come all this way to turn back now. The dress was a good disguise. Those who
remembered her in the Tower remembered a young woman with close-cropped hair, always in a boyтАЩs
coat and breeches, never in a dress. It had to be a good disguise. She had no choice about what she was
doing. Not really.

Her stomach fluttered the closer she came to the Tower, and she tightened her grip on the bundle
clutched to her breast. Her usual clothes were in there, and. her good boots, and all her possessions
except the horse she had left at an inn not far from the square. With luck, she would be back on the
gelding in a few hours, riding for the Ostrein Bridge and the road south.

She was not really looking forward to climbing onto a horse again so soon, not after weeks in the saddle
with never a dayтАЩs pause, but she longed to leave this place. She had never seen the White Tower as
hospitable, and right now it seemed nearly as awful as the Dark OneтАЩs prison at Shayol Ghul. Shivering,
she wished she had not thought of the Dark One.I wonder if Moiraine thinks I came just because she
asked me? The Light help me, acting like a fool girl. Doing fool things because of a fool man!

She mounted the stairs uneasily тАФ each was deep enough to take two strides for her to reach the next
тАФ and unlike most of the others, she did not pause for an awed stare up the pale height of the Tower.
She wanted this over.

Inside, archways almost surrounded the large, round entry hall, but the petitioners huddled in the middle
of the chamber, shuffling together beneath a flat-domed ceiling. The pale stone floor had been worn and
polished by countless nervous feet over the centuries. No one thought of anything except where they
were, and why. A farmer and his wife in rough woolens, clutching each otherтАЩs callused hands, rubbed
shoulders with a merchant in velvet-slashed silks, a maid at her heels clutching a small worked-silver
casket, no doubt her mistressтАЩs gift for the Tower. Elsewhere, the merchant would have stared down her
nose at farm folk who brushed so close, and they might well have knuckled their foreheads and backed
away apologizing. Not now. Not here.

There were few men among the petitioners, which was no surprise to Min. Most men were nervous
around Aes Sedai. Everyone knew it had been male Aes Sedai, when there still had been male Aes
Sedai, who were responsible for the Breaking of the World. Three thousand years had not dimmed that
memory, even if time had altered many of the details. Children were still frightened by tales of men who
could channel the One Power, men doomed to go mad from the Dark OneтАЩs taint onsaidin , the male
half of the True Source. Worst was the story of Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon, Lews Therin
Kinslayer, who had begun the Breaking. For that matter, the stories frightened adults, too. Prophecy said
the Dragon would be born again in mankindтАЩs greatest hour of need, to fight the Dark One in Tarmon
GaiтАЩdon, the Last Battle, but that made little difference in how most people looked at any connection
between men and the Power. Any Aes Sedai would hunt down a man who could channel, now; of the
seven Ajahs, the Red did little else.

Of course, none of that had anything to do with seeking help from Aes Sedai, yet few men felt easy
about being linked in any way to Aes Sedai and the Power. Few, that is, except Warders, but each
Warder was bonded to an Aes Sedai; Warders could hardly be taken for the general run of men. There