"Greg Keyes - Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone 3 - The Blood Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Keyes J Gregory)

With blue-black hair
Like a raven's wing.
That's my wish.


Anne Dare murmured the words to the song, a favorite of hers from when she
was younger.
She noticed that her fingers were trembling, and for a moment she felt as if they
weren't attached to her but were instead strange worms clinging to her hands.


With blood-red lipsтАж


Anne had seen blood before, plenty of it. But never like this, never with such a
striking hue, so brilliant against the snow. It was as if she were viewing the true color
for the first time rather than the pale counterfeit she had known her whole life.
At the edges it was watered pink, but at its source, where it pulsed into the cold
whiteness, it was a thing of utter beauty.


With snow-white skin
With blue-black hairтАж


The man had flesh gone gray and straw-colored hair, nothing like the imagined
lover of the song. As she watched, his fingers unclenched from the dagger he'd been
holding, and he let go the cares of the world. His eyes went round with wonder as
they saw something she could not, beyond the lands of fate. Then he sighed a final
steaming breath into the snow.
SomewhereтАФvery far away, it seemedтАФshe heard a hoarse cry and the sound of
clashing steel, followed by silence. She detected no motion through the dark trunks
of the trees except the continuing light fall of snow.
Something chuffed nearby.
In a daze, Anne turned to find a dappled gray horse regarding her curiously. It
looked familiar, and she gasped faintly as she recalled it charging toward her. The
snow told that it had stamped all around her, but one trail of hoofprints led in from
over a hill, the direction from which it must have come. Part of the way, the prints
were accompanied by pink speckles.
The horse had blood in its mane, as well.
She stood shakily, feeling pain in her thigh, shin, and ribs. She turned on her feet
to take in the whole of her surroundings, searching for a sign that there was anyone
else nearby. But there were only the dead man, the horse, and trees stripped to bark
by winters winds.
Finally she glanced down at herself. She wore a soft red doeskin robe lined with
black ermine and beneath that a heavy riding habit. She remembered she'd gotten
them back in Dunmrogh.
She remembered the fight there, too, and the death of her first love and first
betrayer, Roderick.
She pushed her hand under the hood and felt the curls of her copper hair. It was