"Kay, Guy Gavriel - Fionavar Tapestry 2 - Wandering Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

"Is it all right?"
She shrugged. Too hard to explain. She had an understanding, of late, as to why Ysanne had withdrawn in solitude to her lake. There were two lights in the room: one on the ceiling and the other on her hand. "We'd better call the guys," she said.
"I already have. They'll be here soon."
Kim glanced sharply at her. "What did I say in my sleep?"
Jennifer's eyes were kind again; they had been since Darien was born. "You cried out for forgiveness," she said. She would drag the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom.
"Fat chance," said Kimberly.
The doorbell rang. In a moment they were standing all around her, anxious, disheveled, half asleep. She looked up. They were waiting, but the waiting was over; she had seen an island and a lake like glass.
"Who's coming with me to England?" she asked, with brittle, false brightness in her voice.
All of them went. Even Dave, who'd had to virtually quit his articling job to get away on twenty-four hours' notice. A year ago he'd carried a packet of Evidence notes into Fionavar with him, so determined was he to succeed in the law. He'd changed so much; they all had. After seeing Rangat throw up that unholy hand, how could anything else seem other than insubstantial?
Yet what could be more insubstantial than a dream? And it was a dream that had the five of them hurtling overseas on a 747 to London and, in a Renault rented at Heathrow and driven erratically and at speed by Kevin Laine, to Amesbury beside Stonehenge.
Kevin was in a fired-up mood. Released at last from the waiting, from months of pretending to take an interest in the tax, real estate, and civil-procedure courses that preceded his call to the Bar, he gunned the car through a roundabout, ignored Dave's spluttering, and skidded to a stop in front of an ancient hotel and tavern called, of course, the New Inn.
He and Dave handled the baggage-none of them had more than carry-ons-while Paul registered. On the way in they passed the entrance to the bar-crowded at lunchtime-and he caught a glimpse of a cute, freckled barmaid.
"Do you know," he told Dave, as they waited for Paul to arrange for the rooms, "I can't remember the last time I was laid?"
Dave, who couldn't either, with greater justification, grunted. "Get your mind out of your pants, for once."
It was frivolous, Kevin supposed. But he wasn't a monk and couldn't ever pretend to be. Diarmuid would understand, he thought, though he wondered if even that dissolute Prince would comprehend just how far the act of love carried Kevin, or what he truly sought in its pursuit. Unlikely in the extreme, Kevin reflected, since he himself didn't really know.
Paul had the keys to two adjacent rooms. Leaving Kimberly, at her own insistence, alone in one of the rooms, the four others drove the mile west to join the tour buses and pocket cameras by the monument. Once there, even with the daytime tackiness, Kevin sobered. There was work to be done, to prepare for what would happen that night.
Dave had asked on the plane. It had been very late, the movie over, lights dimmed. Jennifer and Paul had been asleep when the big man had come over to where Kevin and Kim were sitting, awake but not speaking. Kim hadn't spoken the whole time, lost in some troubled country born of dream.
"What are we going to do there?" Dave had asked her diffidently, as if fearing to intrude.
And the white-haired girl beside him had roused herself to say, "You four will have to do whatever it takes, to give me enough time."
"For what?" Dave had said.
Kevin, too, had turned his head to look at Kim as she replied, far too matter-of-factly, "To raise a King from the dead and make him surrender a name. After that I'll be on my own."
Kevin had looked past her then, out the window, and seen stars beyond the wing; they were flying very high over deep waters.
"What time is it?" Dave asked for the fifth time, fighting a case of nerves.
"After eleven," said Paul, continuing to fidget with a spoon. They were in the saloon bar of the hotel; he, Dave, and Jen at the table, Kevin, unbelievably, chatting up the waitress over by the bar. Or not, actually, unbelievably; he'd known Kevin Laine a long time.
"When the hell is she coming down?" Dave had an edge in his voice, a real one, and Paul could feel anxiety building in himself as well. It was going to be a very different place at night, he knew, with the crowds of the afternoon gone. Under stars, Stonehenge would move back in time a long way. There was a power here still, he could feel it, and he knew it would be made manifest at night.
"Does everyone know what they have to do?" he repeated.
"Yes, Paul," said Jennifer, surprisingly calm. They'd worked out their plans over dinner after returning from the monument. Kim hadn't left her room, not since they'd arrived.
Kevin strolled back to the table, with a full pint of beer.
"Are you drinking?" Dave said sharply.
"Don't be an idiot. While you two have been sitting here doing nothing, I've gotten the names of two of the guards out there. Len is the big bearded one, and there's another named Dougal, Kate says."
Dave and Paul were silent.
"Nicely done," said Jennifer. She smiled slightly.
"Okay," said Kim, "let's go." She was standing by the table in a bomber jacket and scarf. Her eyes were a little wild below the locks of white hair and her face was deathly pale. A single vertical line creased her forehead. She held up her hands; she was wearing gloves.
"It started to glow five minutes ago," she said.
And so she had come to the place and it was time indeed, here, now, to manifest herself, to show forth the Baelrath in a crimson blaze of power. It was the Warstone, found, not made, and very wild, but there was a war now, and the ring was coming into its force, carrying her with it past the high shrouded stones, the fallen one, and the tilting one, to the highest lintel stone. Beside which she stopped.
There was shouting behind her. Very far behind her. It was time. Raising her hand before her face Kimberly cried out in a cold voice, far from what she sounded like when allowed to be only herself, only Kim, and said into stillness, the waiting calm of that place, words of power upon power to summon its dead from beyond the walls of Night.
"Damae Pendragon! Sed Baelrath riden log verenth. Pendragon rabenna, nisei damae!"
There was no moon yet. Between the ancient stones, the Baelrath glowed brighter than any star. It lit the giant teeth of rock luridly. There was nothing subtle or mild, nothing beautiful about this force. She had come to coerce, by the power she bore and the secret she knew. She had come to summon.
And then, by the rising of a wind where none had been before, she knew she had.
Leaning forward into it, holding the Baelrath before her, she saw, in the very center of the monument, a figure standing on the altar stone. He was tall and shadowed, wrapped in mist as in a shroud, only half incarnated in the half-light of star and stone. She fought the weight of him, the drag; he had been so long dead and she had made him rise.
No space for sorrow here, and weakness shown might break the summoning. She said:
"Uther Pendragon, attend me, for I command your will!"
"Command me not, I am a King!" His voice was high, stretched taut on a wire of centuries, but imperious still.
No space for mercy. None at all. She hardened her heart. "You are dead," she said coldly, in the cold wind. "And given over to the stone I bear."
"Why should this be so?"
The wind was rising. "For Ygraine deceived, and a son falsely engendered." The old, old telling.
Uther drew himself to his fullest height, and he was very tall above his tomb. "Has he not proven great beyond all measure?"
And thus: "Even so," said Kimberly, and there was a soreness in her now that no hardening could stay. "And I would call him by the name you guard."
The dead King spread his hands to the watching stars. "Has he not suffered enough?" the father cried in a voice that overrode the wind.
To this there was no decent reply, and so she said, "I have no time, Uther, and he is needed. By the burning of my stone I compel you-what is the name?"