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

the terrible pressure against his outward senses and his inward person, Simon dimly saw the pillars bow
toward each other and fall, to crush all who had been in that narrow valley. The cauldron glow was
extinguished.

Simon rolled over on his back, his arm upheld in a gesture of pleading, to whom or what he could
not guess. Then she came. Jaelithe was as visible in his mind as if she stood before him.

"Back, get you back, Simon. Bring with you all those you can add to the force of Light. For there
has been such magic wrought as threatens an end to all our world!"

He reached for her now, but she flickered out. Nor did he understand then that the ancient Mage
Key had vanished from this plane of existence. It left behind uncontrolled, unwardered other gates against
which there would be no defense save the bodies and minds of those doomed to struggle through the
days to come.

PROLOGUE TWO
Arvon Kar Garudiyn (Castle of the Gryphon)
The day was fair, that Eydryth could not deny. She stroked her harp. Certainly a day to bring
music into the world. Yet something kept her from plucking at the silver-blue strings of the instrument.
She felt restless and at the same time was disinclined to move out of this warm band of sunlight in the
courtyard.

This was not the silent keep her parents had ridden into years ago, felted deeply by dust over the
passing years. Instead, for more than her lifetime it had been a dwelling alive with those whose love and
camaraderie she cherished the most. Now she was late home from perilous wandering, and she should
sink happily into its welcoming peace. But this morning--

Though she had not realized it, Alon had been a second half of her for longer than their actual
marriage. Yet in the past few days it was as if a drift of time and space had come between them.

It was surely because of Hilarion--that adept survival of the Old Time who had taken Alon into
training, knowing him for what he was, born with the greater talents. She had never seen Hilarion, who
lived with the famed sorceress Kaththea Tregarth, half the world away. To her he was but a name, for
Alon seldom mentioned those days before their own meeting.

She had seen him weave magic far beyond the control of any that she knew -- but that was only
in times of great danger, and all that was now safely behind them.

Alon had not gone with the rest -- Kerovan, Joison, and their son and daughter; Jervon and Elys
her own parents -- down to the Herd Marking of the Kioga when the proper colts were chosen for
training and the Kioga camp was a swirl of noise and confusion.

No, for the past days Alon had quietly disappeared into the high tower of this ancient pile, and
what he sought, or what he wrought, there she had no idea. None save that this was a thing which Alon
must choose to tell when and if he would. Still her mind kept pricking her with the thought of Hilarion.

"Eydryth, where is Firdun? He promised-- " Her young brother padded barefooted across the
pavement of the court with a peevish echo in his question.

They had all gotten over the shock Trevor had provided last year, or at least were no longer