"Andre Norton - Witch World - Lore of the Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

the ones they're going to put into the hands of their own sons and
daughters and say with that special, waited-for hope: "I think you might
like this. It's good." There's hardly a gift one can give another so precious
as something that wakes us to what we call sense of wonder. That's what
Andre's work has done for so very many of us. She's special. She's one of
those talents without which this field would be inestimably the poorer.
She reminds me curiously enough of John Wayne: a quiet person with
strong convictions, who never much goes with fads but does things her
way, whose style is her own, and who has shot straight and told the truth
and given a lot of readers, young and old, a marvelous sense of heroism
possible in their own lives, because it's right there pointed out to us what
great possibilities there are, what great hearts in unlikely frames, what
grand adventures likely for those who see their world with sense of
wonder!

She writes. And the thing she does for this field has woven itself
through so many lives that that influence keeps traveling. She's vexingly
modest and deprecates such notions, but they're true, Andre! And I'm glad
to have gotten the chance to say them. Thank you. Andre, for being there,
for making worlds, for opening up so much of wonder to usтАж I get to say
it; but I say it for so many others. Thank you.




SPIDER SILK
1
The Big Storm in the Year of the Kobold came late, long past the month
when such fury was to be expected. This was all part of that evil which the
Guardians had drawn upon Estcarp when they summoned up their
greatest power to blast and twist the mountain lands, seal off passes
through which had come the invasion from Karsten.

Rannock lay open to that storm. Only the warning dream-sending to
the Wise Woman, Ingvarna, drew a portion of the women and children to
the higher lands, there to watch with fear and trembling the sea's fierce
assault upon the coast So high dashed those waves that water covered and
boiled about the Serpent Teeth of the upper ledges. Only here, in pockets
among the Tor rocks, could a fugitive crouch in almost mindless terror,
awaiting the end.

Of the fishing fleet which had set out yesterday morn, who had any
hopes now of its return save perhaps a scattering of wreckage, playthings
of the storm waves?

There were left only a handful of old men and boys, and one or two such
as Herdrek, the Twist-Leg, the village smith. For Rannock was as poor in
men as it was in all else since the war years had ravaged Estcarp. To the
north perched Alizon, a hawk ready to be unleashed upon its neighbor;
from the south Karsten boiled and bubbled, if aught was still left alive