"Andre Norton - Brother To Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

Over the years there had been a number of slides here. He came to a place where his path
was closed by blocks of masonry, perhaps a portion of the wall above, and he had to
wriggle by. Then he came suddenly on a ledge which sloped upwards and showed the
marks of very old tooling, undoubtedly one of the ways into the deserted Lair.

That was not what he wished. He must round what remained of the stronghold to locate
the road on the other side. And the ledge was soon choked with debris. This was
dangerous footing and Jofre walked with careful tread.

The half-destroyed wall arose on his right. There was the broken archway of a minor door
but what he sought would lie beyond, and he shifted left, paralleling that offshoot of the
wall. Something floated down, touched his sleeveтАФ then another and another flake. The
snow was beginning and, unless he would have himself walled from the pass, he must
hurry.

Qaw-en-itter had been of moderate size, he concluded. Though so much of it was in ruin
that he could not, without some waste of time, trace out its original ways. He tried to
think of its historyтАФthere had been somethingтАФlike a flicker, a scrap of memory came
and went in his mind.

The master crystal here had failed, of course, or it would still be inhabited. But there was
something elseтАФthe last MasterтАФJofre shook his head. For all his meticulous training he
could not deepen that very faint feeling of having heard something.

The flakes of falling snow thickened, still were not enough to hide the way ahead. He had
sight, if limited, and could keep from blundering off trail. Yet when he reached the point
he had been seeking, where that other old path led upwards into the heights, Jofre
hesitated. There was shelter here of a sort. Should the winds rise past the teasing point
which they now held and he be caught in the open on the bareness of the upper slopes, he
would be in a perilous state.

This was a first storm. Those of the Lair had been trained to be weatherwise; they had to
be. Part of him urged pushing on, another suggested a prudent delay. He could not hope
to breast the pass if the snow became a true curtain.

On a quick decision he turned towards the end of the wall where the ruins beyond
promised shelter. Edging around a tumble of stones, he came into what had been the main
court of the Lair. There was a tangle of autumn-dried brush where the land had set its first
grasp back on the forsaken territory. Brittle and sparse though that was, it promised better
than anything he believed was available at a greater height.

Jofre nearly tripped on the first step which had led to the Master's hall, so enbowed was it
with dried grass and drift from storms. He hesitated. To go on into that dark cavern which
opened like a toothless mouth before him would take him out of the storm. But enough of
the Brothers' belief remained in him to warn him off.

Instead he chose a niche to one side, where there had once been a storehouse, enough
remaining of walls and roofing portion to afford shelter better than he could have hoped
for elsewhere. There he set up camp.