"L. E. Modesitt - Timedivers -Timegods - 03 - Timegods' World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"No, sir."

"So you might consider accepting that context is vital in evaluating value systems?"
"Yes, sir."

"Master Kryrel . . ."

For some reason, freezing on Mithrada didn't seem quite so impossible after Old Windlass
finished with me.
 VIII
SOME DREAMS NEVER quite go away. So it was with my dream of the crossroads with
its blue and red and gold and black directions that were all the same and all different.

Some nights that dream would flash before me, and then I would dream no more. Other
nights, I would find myself moved from the crossroads in one direction or another, buffeted
on invisible currents that were no less strong for not being felt or seen, until I was carried
almost through a black chill wall into some place or time. Almost, but not quite, carried
through that barrier, as though I stood behind a curtain where I could see most of what
went on.

One dream was especially vivid. Or perhaps I recalled it because it so closely paralleled
what actually occurred.

I had been carried into those black chill curtains that looked into another world, or so it
seemed, and stood within a tower that glittered, inside and out. The tower was suffused
with an energy that made it a beacon of sorts on both sides of the black curtain. No matter
how I tried to look at the walls, they refused to stay in focus, even less than the other
objects and people I could see from my obscured perspective.

Yet one thing was clear. The tower did not exist. Yet it was concretely there in my
night/dream vision. I could see people walking through that tower. Some few looked
ordinary. Ordinary as they looked, they were suffused with the same sort of energy as the
tower itself, on a lesser scale.

Far less frequently, I could see others, dressed in tight black uniforms, who radiated a far
greater sense of energy. In the most vivid of these dreams, the one that stuck with me, I
could see one of the men in black more clearly than the others. He was below average in
height, and far smaller than the colourful and uniformed giant who stood beside him. Yet
the power which suffused him left the taller figure a mere shadow beside him.

The smaller man seemed graceful, with a narrow face and sandy hair. The strange part
was that he stopped talking to the giant and looked straight at me, though I was certain no
one could see me, ghost shadow that I was behind the black curtains of time or space or
whatever.

I could feel his green eyes burning as he fixed them on me. And then he nodded and
made a sign in the air that seemed like a benediction. The giant swung his head toward
the smaller man, who answered before turning away from me and leaving me in that no-
time place where reality and dreams seemed to almost meet.