"Andre Norton - Oak, Yew, Ash & Rowan 1 - To The King A Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

To the King A Daughter by Andre Norton and Sasha Miller

Prologue

It is only to be expected that all along the roads known to travelers there are shrines, some moss-grown
and older than the last three dynasties of rulers.

There are also the fanesтАФthe cathedralsтАФand the lesser churches and chapels in every village and town.
And does not the Great Fane of the Glowing overshine all of Rendel? These sanctuaries are in honor of
that which cannot be seen or understood but under the rule of which, all life abides.

Yet the Almighty One remains in toils to the dark-handed Weavers, who know neither mercy nor
concern for the lives they twist into their Web Everlasting.

It is only needful that the pattern be not too greatly altered; so here a life-thread is broken, frayed, and
left, and there one snapped is woven into another time and place, and sometimes even into a different
square of Time's Web. The living may believe that they are free to make decisions, to act as they believe
fit, but their thread goes through the fingers of a Weaver. Thus, some live, some die, Kingdoms rise and
fall and are forgotten; yet still the Web shows no break. Does the Unknown ever view that weaving? If
not, of what use are the petitions of lower life? Threads only, yet what a spread of color! What a net of
history hangs ever on the Loom!

However, there are tales in plenty of those whose threads were entangled strangely and who came to
ends far different from their beginnings.

Look at that part of the weaving which is the country of Rendel, great in its own eyes at least, for it is in
the courtyard of the Fane of the Glowing that the Four Trees stand, and in a window of that Fane can be
seen the reflection of the Dark Hands. On one night of autumn sleet and the courageous hold on life,
there began in this reflection the weaving of a new thread, the snapping of an old one, and changes
believed impossible years earlier.

Weave well now, you silent fingers, for the pattern is no longer twisted in the familiar way.

One

The chill gray mist of early morning had become a driving sword blade of sleet before noon when their
last horse foundered. This was the Bale-Bog, or the edge of it, and no sane Outlander forced his way
into that sludge of bottomless pools and unsteady islets unless the need was urgent.

The woman who had been plucked from the exhausted horse, escaping being borne down with it just in
time, managed somehow to keep to her feet, but only because there was a hard, broad shoulder and a
tough, war-trained body there to support her.

Instinctively, her hands pressed her swollen belly, and a grimace of pain twisted her once-beautiful, now
gaunt features.

"How do you, Lady Alditha?"

The rumble of that voice came from the chest very close to her ear. She could feel under the sodden
folds of a trooper's cloak a fineness of mail, which no common trooper could hope to wear. Forcing all