"Katherine Kurtz - Adept 01 - The Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kurtz Katherine)

generate images from their temporal past?"
Wry amusement plucked at the corner of Adam's long mouth. "You were listening closely, weren't you? Yes,
that's the basic idea. The same principle applies to people as well. Those resonances are sometimes
described, in psychic circles, as 'auras.' And they can resonate forward in time, as well as backwards."
"Oh," said Peregrine. For a moment he stared hard at the road ahead. Then in a rush he said, "This problem
of mine - this problem with seeing things that other people can't see - could it be somehow related to this
notion of resonance?"
"It's at least a theory," said Adam. "But I can't give you any hard answers. I suggest you sleep on it."
That proved to be his last word on the subject. Balked in several further attempts to draw out his host in
greater detail, Peregrine at last gave up and allowed the conversation to drift into other channels, equally
fascinating, but of far less personal import, so far as Peregrine could tell. Later that night, none the wiser, he
went to bed with no expectation of falling asleep readily, let alone dreaming.
But as he lay in bed, staring up at the starry patterns on the ceiling, his thoughts drifted so subtly from
conscious into subconscious awareness that he was not aware of having fallen asleep until the onset of the
Dream.

chapter Six

THE dream began as though he were waking up from a light doze. He was still in bed in the Blue Room at
Strathmourne, but the door was standing half-open, emitting a wedge of unearthly light. Peregrine rose from
the bed and crossed to the doorway. When he looked beyond the confines of the room, he realized that he
was standing on the threshold of some other reality.
He should have been facing another door, in a corridor papered in a willow-herb pattern designed by William
Morris. Instead, he was confronting a square chamber, empty and bare, whose blank walls had the silvery
sheen of mirrors. The wall to his right was broken by a high archway, affording him a view of a succession of
other rooms beyond. The light that suffused all the rooms seemed to be emanating from somewhere off in the
distance, in that direction.
Peregrine was seized by a sudden desire to locate the source of the light. His dream-self stepped out into the
middle of the square chamber, and his own reflection sprang out at him from three sides. He fetched up short,
for the reflection did not match up with his appearance.
His dream-persona was wearing the modern clothes he had worn when he had fled to Adam Sinclair in search
of counsel. But the self that gazed back at him out of the mirror was wearing only sandals and a striped
woollen chlamys thrown over the left shoulder, in a style that recalled amphorae paintings from ancient
Greece. Apart from the differences in clothing and hairstyle, however, the reflection conformed with
Peregrine's every look and gesture. It occurred to him, within the framework of the dream, that what he was
seeing might be a true, if deeply hidden, part of himself.
He moved hastily through the arch into the adjoining room. This chamber was mirrored too, and in this one,
his reflection wore the short tunic and leather body armor of a Roman centurion. In the room after, he was
greeted by a long-haired image of himself in a rich Byzantine dalmatic of embroidered silk. More images
followed, detailed like a fantastic display in a museum of historical costume. But the face was always his
own.
The strange gallery of mirrors brought him at last to the foot of a tall door. Ornately carved as the entry port of
a church, it yielded smoothly when Peregrine gave a tentative tug at the latch. He felt no sense of danger, so
he stepped across the threshold and paused to look around.
The chamber in which he found himself was vaulted like a Greek Orthodox chapel, its curving dome overlaid
with mosaic work in marble and gold. LigHt spilled down from a glowing filigree lamp suspended on golden
chains from the ceiling. Directly below the lamp, on an upraised dais of white marble, a curiously fashioned
pedestal supported a shimmering globe the size of a royal orb.
Aware that he was still dreaming, Peregrine gazed at the orb in wonder. It had a nacreous sheen, like a great
pearl. The silken beauty of it drew him like a magnet. Without pausing to consider his actions, he strode