"Andre Norton - Merlin' s mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

course she would have gone dutifully to the one her father
named.

That he did not name any was her present grievance.
They would march to war, all those possible suitors, and
many would die, so there would be far fewer to choose
among. It was a sad waste. She shook her head, muddled
by the ale she had drunk, the half-hypnotizing play of the
flames. Suddenly she could stand it no longer.

She rose from her bench and went back into her cham-
ber. The opposite door of her room opened out on the
parapet of the wall, their outer defense. It was tightly
closed, yet through it the whistle of the wind came even
closer. A lamp burned very dimly in the far comer. She
shrugged out of her robe and, in her chemise, her cloak
still about her, she burrowed into the covers of the bed
against the wall. She shivered, not so much from the chill
of the stone against which that bed was set as from the
menace of the wind and the tales she had heard of what
might ride its gusts this night of all nights. But she was
also sleepy and her eyes soon closed as the lamp sputtered
out.

Below, in the warmth of the fire, Lugaid's hand was
suddenly stilled. His head turned so that he no longer re-
garded Nyren or the man so eloquent in his plea for the
support of the hill chief and Ais people. It was as if the
priest of the Old Ones were listening to something else.

His eyes were wide, startled. Yet there was no sentry
hom sounding, or if there was, only his ears caught it. His
hand moved from his beard to the emblem embroidered
on the breast of his robe, the spiral of gold, as if he hardly
knew what he did or why his fingers traced the lines of

12

Andre Norton

that spiral from outer edge to inner heart. He might have
been half-consciously seeking some answer of vast impor-
tance.

Now his eyes lifted to the balcony on which the women
sat, and he deliberately looked from face to half-seen face
until he came to a gap in their number. Sighting that, he
gave a small gasp. Then he glanced hastily right and left.
He might have feared that his involuntary sound had be-
trayed him in some manner, but the rest of the company