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

stone set behind its flowering. That stone had a surface like glass, the color
of a fine sword blade.

Dairine stood a little behind the Wise Woman. Though Ingvarna had
taught her over the years to make her other senses serve her in place of her
missing sight, so that her fingers were ten eyes, her nostrils, her ears could
catch scent and sound to an extent far outreaching the skill of ordinary
mankind, yet at moments such as this the longing to be as others awoke in
her a sense of loss so dire that to her eyes came tears, flowing silently
down her cheeks. Much Ingvarna had given her. Still, she was not as the
others of Rannock. And ofttimes loneliness settled upon her as a
burdensome cloak. Now the girl sensed that Ingvarna planned for her
some change. That it would make her see as others sawтАФthat she could
not hope for.

She heard clearly the chanting of the Wise Woman. The odor of the
burning herbs filled her nose, now and then made her gasp for a less heavy
lungful of air. Then came a command, not given in words, nor by some
light touch against her arm and shoulder. But into her mind burst an
order and Dairine walked ahead, her hands outstretched, until her ten
fingers flattened against a throbbing surface. Warm it was, near to a point
which would sear her flesh, while its throb was in twin beat to her own
heart. Still, Dairine stood firm, while the chant of the Wise Woman came
more faintly, as if the girl had been shifted farther away in space from her
foster mother.

Then she felt an inward flow from the surface she touched, a warmth
which spread along her hands, her wrists, up her arms. Fainter still came
the voice of Ingvarna petitioning on her behalf, strange and half-forgotten
powers.

Slowly the warmth receded. But how long Dairine had stood so wedded
to that surface she could not see, the girl never knew. Except that there
came a moment when her hands fell, as if too heavily burdened for her to
raise.

"What is done, is done." Ingvarna's voice at the girl's left sounded as
weighted as Dairine's hands felt. "All I have to give, this I have freely
shared with you. Though being blind as men see blindness, yet you have
sight such as few can own to. Use it well, my fosterling."

From that day it became known that Dairine did indeed have strange
powers of "seeing" through her hands. She could take up a thing which
had been made and tell of the maker, of how long since it had been
wrought. A shred of fleece from one of the thin-flanked hill sheep put into
her fingers would enable her to guide an anxious owner to where the lost
flock member had strayed.

There was one foretelling which she would not do, after she came upon
its secret by chance only. For she had taken the hand of little Hulde during