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

Some things are best lost, but vanity being what it is, I have settled for censorship over
oblivion. Anyone who does unlock the seals will, I trust, also read the factual supplements
and data before coming to a final judgement on my follies.

Consecrated to the Temple as Sammis Arloff Olon, I still go by Sammis, although some
persist in trying to distinguish me by using my original surname. That too shall pass, at
least in another dozen millennia. Time flows more slowly these days, now that Query has
left the seasons of the single-night moth and entered the long afternoon of the Immortals.

Why did it happen? How?

No one can answer the first question. As for the second, for me, it began with a dream.

In the dream I stood above four roads. There were no vehicles, no power wagons, no
silent steamers, no gliding electrovans, just four roads.

One was gold, cold as the dark between stars.

One was black, and the heat rose from it as from the Grand Highway in summer.

One was red and smelled like memories.

And the last was blue, bright blue like tomorrow's dawn.

Despite the dream of these roads, then I had no special love of travel, nor do I yet.
Everything I needed was in Bremarlyn--from the creek where I built dams to see how high
I could raise the water behind my assembly of stones and sand to the fields where we
played centreslot. No, I cannot say I had close friends, but we all played together most of
the time, and, when we did not play, we fought.

In my first dream of the crossroads, I merely stood there paralysed and unable to set foot
on any road. Fear did not prevent me from taking that step. I could not move. Nor could I
speak nor sigh. So I watched the four roads, somehow suspended above them, as each
disappeared into its coloured distance.
The four were not a crossroads exactly, and in the distance that was not distance, each
split and splintered into hundreds of different directions, until each created its own
horizon--blue, red, black, and gold. Yet all directions were the same, and every road went
in all directions.

Wherever I was, watching the roads, it was cold, bone-chilling cold.

Then, abruptly, as I wished to return to my bed and its comfort, I was there, sprawled on
cold quilts. Cold quilts, as if I had not been sleeping there during my dream.

Feeling exhausted, though I had done nothing in my dream but watch, I slept . . . deeply.
And I did not dream. Not then.

While I seldom remembered most of my dreams, the four roads remained with me, with
their promise of anticipation and memory, heat and chill, long after I had roused myself
from my quilts, long after I pulled on my Academy uniform and trudged off to classes.