"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 3 - The Druid Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

beyond the rattling labors of her lungs. The air seemed impossibly dry, sucking the moisture from her skin
and throat, parching her very blood with its persistent, penetrating warmth.
She ran and ran, ignoring the weariness and fatigue, the aches that throbbed in her feet, the stitch of pain
that grew steadily longer and deeper in her side. She ran only to get away from this thing she did not know,
but that she feared above all else in the world ... or beyond the world. It loomed nearer now, and this
proximity drove extra energy through her veins, propelling her feet into a faster gait.
Another corner beckoned, and she hurtled herself blindly around it, sensing the looming evil as if it
reached for her back with rending talons, claws that would rake her ribs aside and rip the heart from her
terrified flesh.
Then she stopped in shock, terrified beyond measure. Once again the threat lay before her! She saw it
come out of the darkness, materializing a few steps away, confronting her with an image of monstrous evil,
of hopeless despair and infernal betrayal.
This time when she opened her mouth the scream was loud and piercing, a shock wave of sound that
echoed down the halls and threatened to shatter the smooth glass of the ceiling. Yet the image of evil
confronted her still, coolly inspecting her, red lips twisted into a wry smile ... an expression of cool
contempt, perhaps tinged with a tiny measure of pity.
She screamed again and again, but the image never wavered, never moved away. Finally the woman
slumped to the ground in abject surrender, gazing at the shape that loomed above her, abandoning hope ...
giving in to ultimate despair.
For the looming image, the form and visage that embodied the most potent evil known ... that body and
that face were her own.
 1
Gwynneth
"She's sleeping again. That's about all I can say for her." The king reentered the bedroom with a sigh, his
shoulders slumping from the weight of his worries. Caer Corwell was still with the silence of the midwatch,
night lying thickly about them, though a few embers still glowed red in the large fireplace. A huge dog,
blanketed by a coarse coat of rust-colored fur, looked up from the hearthside and thumped his tail once in
greeting.
"Better that than the nightmares," Queen Robyn replied, rising from the couch to embrace her husband.
It seemed to the woman that her husband had never looked so old. She noticed that the tint of gray in his
hair had grown to an entire fringe. His beard remained full, but even more gray than his once
chestnut-colored hair. His dark eyes still blazed with grim determination, but now a hint of despair lurked
within them.
It was a despair that Robyn could well understand. Like King Tristan, the queen sagged wearily, and her
face was drawn and pallid. Her long hair had lost none of its inky blackness, but now it lay carelessly
across her shoulders, uncombed and lacking its usual luster.
The man and woman, High King and High Queen of the Ffolk and the Moonshaes, sat down together on
the couch, neither quite ready to return to bed. The great moorhound, Ranthal, rested at their feet, large
ears pricked upward to catch any sign of distress or danger, as if the dog, too, sensed that these minutes of
nocturnal peace were too rare, too precious to consign them to sleep.
Scarcely a week following their triumphant return to Corwell, fresh from a daring rescue of the
imprisoned king, the royal pair had no concerns other than the health of their daughter Deirdre. During the
daytime, the young princess lay awake, weak and exhausted from a sleep without rest. Deirdre had little
appetite, nor did she ever seem to feel thirst. Indeed, if Robyn did not force her to drink and to eat a few
crumbs, she feared that her daughter would take no sustenance at all.
Yet these bleak days were nothing, it seemed, when compared to the nights. Deirdre regarded the
approaching sunset with apprehension that steadily built into terror. For hours, she would lie awake,
sometimes talking to her sister or one of her parents. On other occasions, she grew shrill and irrational,
demanding that her visitor leave, screaming and writhing in apparent agony until her wish was granted.
Finally, then, sleep would claim her. For a precious few moments, her body lay still, relaxed at last. Then,