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

He raised both hands high and began to weave a pattern back and forth in the air, angry red trails
following his fingers.

Now he chanted also, but the sound reached Simon only as singsong noise.

Simon needed no nudging from a talent he lacked тАФ heknew Rarapon was striving to open a gate!
Gates were the ancient ways through which the adepts of the Great Age had explored other worlds at
their whims тАФ whose secrets, even whose existence in most cases had been forgotten.

The gates had not only taken wanderers and wayfarers out тАФ they had drawn them in. From solitary
venturers, such as he had been so many years ago, to whole nations like the Dalesmen of High Hallack,
the Sulcars, and various smaller bands and clans.

And they had drawn evil as well. The plague of the Kolders, who had ravaged as much of this world as
they could touch. Lately also that invasion overseas made by strange seagoing race of fanatics whom only
the skill, blood, and courage of Falconers and Dalesmen together had stopped. The Falconers
themselves, the тАФ

None of those who survived that blast of raw magic, uncontrolled, chaotic, could afterward honestly
describe the ponderous power which had played with them. Deafened, only half conscious from 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)
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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