"Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill - Carolus Rex 1 - The Shadow of Albion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

Over the thunder of the horsesтАЩ hooves, Sarah could hear the crack of the whip
and the hoarse cries of the driver. Though the horses would receive frequent
changes, the driver would not, and Sarah wondered with some small part of her
mind how he would endeavor to maintain such a performance until they reached
London with tomorrowтАЩs noon.
The vehicle had rattled quite fearfully at first тАУ its entire exterior was covered with
bags and bundles, the possessions of the passengers, and those persons who had
chosen for reasons of economy to ride on the roof тАУ but now everything capable of
making noise had either fallen off or been jammed immobile into some corner of the
coach. Everything, Sarah reflected unhappily, except the passengers, who continued
to be flung back and forth at the whim of rut and road.
The pauses the coach made to take up mail and discharge passengers were the
only respite from the eternal battering of the journey, and none of them, even those
including a change of team, lasted more than a few minutes. Day fell into night and
Sarah dozed fitfully, body numbed at last by the relentless jarring of the coachтАЩs
headlong progress.
She roused to see the faint light of dawn leaking in through the coachтАЩs leather
curtains, and pushed one aside to see where they were.
Beyond the coach window lay a landscape unlike any she had ever known:
treeless and flat, strangely colorless in the grey morning light. To her left she could
see what she thought at first were the stumps of mighty trees, but as the coach
passed closer she saw that the figures were not trees, but vast, rough-hewn pillars of
stone, placed in the middle of this plain by some unknown people for some
unfathomable purpose.
The sudden awareness of danger was a cold thrill along her limbs, and at the very
moment Sarah recognized it and searched for its source, the music of the mail
coachтАЩs thundering progress changed. She heard the driver cry out, the crack of his
whip, the faltering of the horsesтАЩ headlong pace. The other passengers began to
rouse, and then the coach slewed violently.
Sarah was half flung through the window with the jolt, and in the split-instant
before disaster she saw the cause тАУ a woman, standing upon the high perch of some
strange spidery chariot, her arm flung back to wield the whip upon her wildly
plunging four-horse team. The womanтАЩs face was pale, intent тАУ
тАУ and suddenly Sarah realized she was staring at her own face, as if she gazed
into an eerie mirror. In the next moment, the coach was struck by some heavy
unseen hand, and Sarah felt herself falling, the image of her own face seen from
without frozen in memory.

***
She opened her eyes in a room she had never seen before. Through long
windows to her right, sunlight shone at the slanting angle of late afternoon, and when
she turned toward that light Sarah could see pale blue sky and a line of trees. The
movement of her head was rewarded with the commencement of a dull throbbing
ache in every limb. Now she remembered: there had been a coaching accident тАУ a
hideous crash. She had been there. And now she was here.
Sarah opened her mouth to summon help, and a wave of giddiness threatened to
whirl her back into unconsciousness. She bit her lip, willing the darkness to recede,
and concentrated on her surroundings to distract herself from swooning.
The bed upon which she lay was very fine, with elaborate carven posts and
fringed canopy. Hue velvet curtains, lined in white silk and embroidered in silver,