"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 2 - The Coral Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

Robyn awakened suddenly amid the stillness of the sleeping camp. For a brief moment, her mind flashed
back to younger days. How long had it been since she had slept beneath a canopy of stars? Too long, she
decided.
But then, in the clarity of her growing awareness, she wondered what it was that had interrupted her
slumber. Sitting up and pulling her woolen cloak about her shoulders, she looked around the silent camp.
The outline of a large, broad-shouldered man was visible some distance above the rest of them. She
recognized Hanrald and remembered that the Earl of Fairheight had taken the midnight watch. A swift
glance at the stars confirmed her estimate of the time.
The unseasonal chill remained in the air, but to the High Queen, the brisk weather was a bracing
welcome, an embrace of nature, ushering her back to her favorite domain.
No longer questioning, Robyn followed an instinctive sense, slowly approaching the glowing mound of
coals that marked the place where their fire had blazed hours earlier. She stopped several feet away from
the firepit but close enough to feel the radiant warmth on her face, and then she spread the blanket apart
with her arms, allowing the heat to caress her entire body.
Slowly the dull red of the coals began to brighten, though the steady radiance of heat remained
comfortably constant. Robyn stared at the embers, watching spots of light grow from orange pinpricks to
blazing yellow circles in her eyes, as if she stared at the sun near noon of a high summer day.
Yet instead of feeling pain, she felt a powerful sense of exultation, a kind of energy she hadn't known
for two decades.
This was the power of the Earthmother, she knew, and it flowed into the willing woman who again was
the Great Druid of that goddess.
Finally the power became too great, and Robyn fell to her knees. Still she did not lower her eyes, and
slowly the lights that dazzled her shifted into cooler spectrumsтАФred, blue, and finally a pale violet that
seemed to linger for hours, soothing the druid's taut nerves and acting as a balm for the grave troubles that
worried her.
Then, when next Robyn raised her eyes, she saw a misty form begin to gather in the air above the fire.
A whirling vapor coalesced in the night, growing more substantial as it slowed the rate of its rotation. Finally
the mist solidified, just for a moment, into the image of a proud wolf's-head. Yellow eyes gleamed at Robyn,
seeming to blink against the darkness.
"There is evil..." The wolf spoke to her, in a voice like the hunting cry of a distant pack. It pierced her
heart with a plaintive, savagely beautiful song. At the same time, Robyn heard a firm undertone of danger,
of a deep and imminent menace that intruded into this place like a cancerous tumor.
The long, narrow jaws seemed to grin, revealing ivory fangs that gleamed in the darkness. The yellow
eyes stared with unblinking intensity, bright and powerful. Robyn Kendrick opened her heart and her mind,
letting the sign wash over her. She listened, for the first time since she had been a very young woman, to
the pure voice of her goddess.
"Seek . . . seek the evil. . . ." Again the soft cry floated through the night. "For there you will find
good. . ."
The sound and image faded for many wondrous minutes, as if the pack ranged over distant hills, each
rise carrying the sound farther and farther, until nothing remained but the wind whispering among the full
summer leaves.
"I understand, my Mother," Robyn said softly.
The coals had sunk to mere shadowy remnants of their previous warmth. But as the queen returned to
her bedrolls and wrapped her blanket against the chill, the warmth of the fire glowed with the warmth of
her spirit and her mind.

* * * * *

Talloth cantered easily up the gentle forest trail, and Brigit felt the full joy of a Synnorian sunrise fill her
body and her spirit. The morning had dawned clear, and the sun was no more than two handspans over the