"Andre Norton - WW - Secrets 03 - The Warding of Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

However, as suddenly as it had struck, it was gone. They lay still for a long moment, as weak as
plague victims who had crawled from their beds.

Sylvya's message shook them back to life.

There has been such magic wrought as this world has not seen since the final battle of the
Great War -- a rending and tearing past measuring. Those of Garth Howell lie now as dead and
their captive rides to freedom.

Alon's face was wet with sweat as he rubbed his hands across his cheeks. "That was not aimed
at us here, or we who had our minds open would be dead. Hilarion -- I must know --

He swung around as if he would go back at once to the tower where he had been so pent, but
Eydryth caught his arm.

"What has Hilarion to do with this? He is an adept of Old, one of the race which brought doom
upon us all in that day. Is this some new magic of his devising?"

Alon drew her close. "Not so. I was pupil to him and he is a master of the Light. We strive now
to devise a form of communication which can cover great distances. It is my belief that perhaps such raw
power unleashed may answer our last problem. But I must know --

"We all must know." That was Kerovan. "For I think that a very wide door to the ways of the
Dark may have been opened, and that all of good need to stand together to preserve the Light."

PROLOGUE THREE
Shrine of Gunnora, South of Var
 Destree n'Regnant strode back from the bathing pool, her wet towel swinging in one hand, the
fingers of the other busy with the latches of her jerkin. Destree had never been one to linger over the
matter of arising in the morning, with its attendant need for dressing, preparation of food, and the like, but
she accepted such as a matter of living.

She had slipped a silver ring over her shoulder-length fall of fair hair, tethering the locks out of the
way at the nape of her neck, though some remaining drops of water sprinkled from side to side as she
walked.

Already her thoughts were well ahead of her body, busy with the known demands of the day
before her. There was the potion to be enflasked for Josephinia, whose joint pain had awakened fiercely
during the recent weeks of one storm after another, and she must swing by the Pajan farm to look upon
the new colt that was reported a weakling. But there never seemed enough time between sunrise and
sunset to do everything.

Also, this morning she had awoken with a faint troubling of mind. It was not a lingering from one
of her Lady's outright informative dreams--she would have remembered every detail of such--yet she
could not altogether forget it.

The huge black cat, sitting on the steps of the ancient shrine Destree had worked with her own
hands and strength to restore, opened his mouth in one of his silent meows. By the Lady, Chief seemed
to grow larger every season! He certainly was far more impressive than any of the farm cats of the valley.