"Patricia A. McKillip - The Book of Atrix Wolfe" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

In wolf shape, among the wolves, he had scented danger sweeping toward the mountains he
loved. His dreams turned dark with the coming of winter, chaotic, disturbed by fire, blood, the
sharp, hoarse cries of ravens calling to one another, the cries of humans. Darkness rode a dark
horse into the heart of Pelucir, wielding a sword of fire and bone that pierced the Wolf's
dreams. He would wake suddenly in human shape, in a close tangle of fur and smells, trying to
see beyond stone, beyond night, into the fire that burned toward Chaumenard. Finally,
harrowed by dreams and unable to rest content in wolf shape, he ran to meet the dark rider in
Pelucir. He would stop it there, somehow, in the broad fields and gentle hills of the kingdom
bordering Chaumenard, before the rider cast its blank, hungry eye into the land of mages and
scholars and farmers who raised goats in the high peaks, and plowed a furrow from light into
shadow down their sharply sloping sides.
The mage was old, and lingered, every year, longer and longer in the mountains among the
wolves. That year, he had forgotten it was winter and that he was human. Pulled so abruptly
back into the world, he had not stopped to tell anyone where he was going. Nor did he know
who fought in Pelucir. He ran, in wolf shape, faster than any wolf; he was a shimmer of icy
wind blowing down the mountain's flank, the white shadow of his own legend, barely
perceptible, moving swiftly, silently, under the staring winter moon, toward the eye of the
terrible storm: the castle of the Kings of Pelucir.
He had seen Pelucir in fairer days, when the massive, bulky castle stood surrounded by
flowering fields, the slow river running under its bridge reflecting such green that drinking it
would be drinking summer itself. The ancient keep, a dark, square tower beginning to drop a
stone here and there, like old teeth, faced lush fields and meadows that rolled to a rounded hill
where an endless wood of oak and birch began. Now the trees stood stark and silvery with
moonlight, and on the fields a hundred fires burned in the burning cold, ringed around the
castle.
The mage, still little more than a glitter of windblown snow, paused under the moon shadow
of a parapet wall. Tents billowed and sagged in the wind; sentries shivered at the fires,
watching the castle, listening. Wings rustled in deep shadow; a sentry threw a stone suddenly,
breathing a curse, and a ragged tumble of black leaves swirled up in the wind, then dropped
again. Another sentry spoke sharply to him; they were both silent, watching, listening.
The mage drifted past them, searching; dreams and random nightmares blew against him and
clung. Within the castle, children wrapped in ancient tapestries wept in their sleep; someone
screamed incessantly and would not be comforted; young sentries whispered of fowl browning
on a spit, of hot game pie; old men trembling in the ramparts longed for the fires below, the
sturdy oak on the hill. On the field, men feverish with wounds dreamed of feet made of ice
instead of flesh and bone, of the sharp end of bone where a hand should be, of a mass of black
feathers shifting, softly rustling in the shadows, waiting. The mage saw finally what he
searched for: a flame held in a mailed fist on a purple field, the banner of the ruling house of
Kardeth.
He had known rulers of Kardeth in his long life: fierce and brilliant warrior-princes who grew
restless easily and found the choice between acquiring knowledge and acquiring someone
else's land an arbitrary one. Scholars, they spoke with equal passion of the ancient books and

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arts of Chaumenard, and of its rich valleys and wild, harsh peaks. This ruler, whose name
escaped the mage, must have regarded Pelucir as a minor obstruction between Kardeth and
Chaumenard. But while his army ringed the castle, laying a bitter winter siege, winter had laid
siege to him. He had the wood on the hill for game and firewood; he had only to sit and wait,