"Tad Williams - Memory Sorrow & Thorn 1 - The Dragonbone Chair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

The Harrowing...................................................................................................... 441
Blood and the Spinning World.............................................................................. 454
 This book is dedicated to my mother, Barbara Jean Evans, who taught to me a deep
affection for Toad Hall, the Hundred Aker Woods, the Shire, and many other hidden places
and countries beyond the fields we know. She also induced in me a lifelong desire to make
my own discoveries, and to share them with others. I wish to share this book with her.
 Authors Note

тАЬI have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world and to comfort noble
hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common
world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in
bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does
not regard: its life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears
together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heartтАЩs delight and its pain of
longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me
have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.тАЭ
тАУ Gottfried von Strassburg
(author of Tristan und Isolt)



This work would not have been possible without the help of many people. My thanks
go out to: Eva Cumming, Nancy Deming-Williams, Arthur Ross Evans, Peter Stampfel,
and Michael Whelan, who all read a dreadfully long manuscript, then offered support,
useful advice, and clever suggestions; to Andrew Harris, for logistical support above and
beyond the call of friendship; and especially to my editors, Betsy Wollheim and Sheila
Gilbert, who worked long and hard to help me write the best book I could. They are great
souls all.
 AuthorтАЩs Warning
Wanderers in the land of Osten Ard are cautioned not to put blind trust in old rules and
forms, and to observe all rituals with a careful eye, for they often mask being with
seeming.

The Qanuc-folk of the snow-mantled Trollfells have a proverb. тАЬHe who is certain he
knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or
extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a
knife in the heart of wonder.тАЭ

More bluntly, new visitors to this land should take heed:
Avoid Assumptions.

The Qanuc have another saying: тАЬWelcome stranger. The paths are treacherous today.тАЭ



Foreword
тАЬ...The book of the mad priest Nisses is large, say those who have held it, and as heavy
as a small child. It was discovered at NissesтАЩ side as he lay, dead and smiling, beside the
tower window from which his master King Hjeldin had leaped to his own death moments
before.