"Tad Williams - Memory Sorrow & Thorn 2 - Stone of Farewell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

and all. ThatтАЩs why theyтАЩve all left the town and moved into the keep. ItтАЩs the damnable,
demon-cursed weather thatтАЩs keeping the sentries off the walls, isnтАЩt it? IsnтАЩt it!?
He stood and surveyed with mad interest the pile of snow-mantled rubbish that had
been NaglimundтАЩs greater gate. The huge pillars and massive stones were charred black
beneath the drifts. The hole in the sagging wall stood large enough to hold twenty
Hengfisks standing abreast, shoulder to bony, trembling shoulder.
Look how theyтАЩve let things go. Oh, theyтАЩll shriek when their judgment comes, shriek
and shriek with never a chance to make amends. Everything has been let go тАУ the gate, the
town, the weather.
Somebody must be scourged for such negligence. Doubtless Bishop Anodis had his
hands full crying to keep such an unruly flock in line. Hengfisk would be only too happy to
help that fine old man minister to such slackers- First, a fire and some warm food. Then. a
little monasterial discipline. Things would soon be brought to rights...
Hengfisk stepped carefully through the splintered posts and white-covered stones.

The thing of it was, the monk slowly realized, in a way it was quite... beautiful.
Beyond the gate, all things were covered in a delicate tracery of ice, like lacy veils of
spiderweb. The sinking sun embellished the frosted towers and ice-crusted walls and
courtyards with rivulets of pale fire.
The cry of the wind was somewhat less here within the battlements. Hengfisk stood
for a long while, abashed by the unexpected quiet. As the weak sun slid behind the walls,
the ice darkened. Deep violet shadow swelled up in the comers of the courtyard, stretching
laterally across the faces of the ruined towers. The wind softened to a feline hiss, and the
pop-eyed monk lowered his head in numb recognition.
Deserted. Naglimund was empty, with not a single soul left behind to greet a snow-
bewildered wanderer. He had walked leagues through the storm-ridden white waste to
reach a place that was as dead and dumb as stone.
But, he wondered suddenly, if that is so... then what are those blue lights that flicker in
the windows of the towers?
And what were these figures who approached him across the shambles of the
courtyard, moving as gracefully over the icy stones as blowing thistle down?
His heart raced. At first, as he saw their beautiful, cold faces and pale hair, Hengfisk
thought them angels. Then, as he saw the fell light in their black eyes, and their smiles, he
turned, stumbling, and tried to run.

The Norns caught him effortlessly, then carried him back with them into the depths of
the desolated castle, beneath the shadowed, ice-mantled towers and the ceaselessly
flickering lights. And when NaglimundтАЩs new masters whispered to him in their secretive,
musical voices, his screams for a while overtopped even the howling wind.
 PART ONE: Stormy Eye

The Music of High Places
Even in the cave, where the crackling fire sent gray ringers of smoke up to the hole in
the stony roof, and red light played across the wallcarvings of twining serpents and tusked,
staring-eyed beasts, the cold still gnawed at SimonтАЩs bones. As he floated in and out of
fevered sleep, through curtained daylight and chill night, he felt as though gray ice grew
inside him, stiffening his limbs and filling him with frost. He wondered if he would ever be
warm again.
Fleeing the chill Yiqanuc cave and his sickened body, he wandered the Road of
Dreams, slipping helplessly from one fantasy to the next. Many times he thought he had