"Bradley,.Marion.Zimmer.-.Darkover.Anthology.11.-.Darkover.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

"Shall I search for it?" asked Ronal. "I know exactly where it has been kept all these years."
"If you wish," Hilary agreed, "and Callista shall monitor for you, then."
"See you later," he said, and was off into the over-world. Ten minutes later he was back, a matrix clenched in his hands. "Found it lying about on a high shelf in the library," he said. "Nobody but my father even knew what it was. I heard of another one, too; one is lying on an altar of the forge-folk. Father spent some time in a Tower; that is how he knew what it was. He visited the forge-folk to have them make a sword, and saw it there. It is supposed to be a talisman of their fire-goddess; but it is at least ninth-level. I do not know if I can get it—"
"No, that is work for a Keeper," Hilary said. "Leonie would want to do it herself, I suppose; although I am perfectly capable of it. Except that I should know where to look; there is, after all, more than one village of forge-folk. Meanwhile, let us see what you have here," she said, taking the matrix from him. It was coated with dust, dull blue. She brushed away the dust. "I can well believe that it has been lying about in a library all these years, forgotten. It must have been overlooked when we called in all the matrixes, a couple of generations ago. One like this would be easy to overlook. Let me see if it was ever a monitored matrix."
She laid it carefully in a cradle and activated a small screen. For a long time she was silent, light from the screen coming and going, and reflecting on her narrow face. The other two leaned close. At last, Hilary switched off the screen, the lights fading, and said, "I still do not know all its history, and it is not important enough to do timesearch to find it out; but it is very old. It may have been made before the Towers—oh, yes," she said in reply to Ronal's startled glance. "It is an artificial one, perhaps one of the first ones made. I wish

I knew who made it. Oh, well—" She wrapped it carefully in insulating silks and said, "Your father did not mind giving it up?"
"No," said Ronal, "I don't suppose he knew he was; when I appeared to him, he thought he was dreaming of me. When he finds out that I have really been home, even in spirit, he will be so busy saying I should have first shown myself to my mother that he will not get around to scolding me for the loss of the matrix for years—if ever. It means nothing to him, and so it belongs here; Leonie may discover a use for it—or if not, destroy it."
"Which will be safer for all concerned," Hilary agreed. "Do you want to go after the one the forge-folk hold tonight?"
"No," said Ronal, a little reluctantly; Hilary looked tired and ill, and he knew if she overstrained herself Leonie would be angry. Much as he enjoyed working together like this, elementary caution could not be neglected. And another thing: "Leonie might wish to seek for this one herself. It is a large and an important one, perhaps not to be left to a couple of apprentices."
When Leonie heard of the ninth-level matrix, she was eager to seek it for herself. Therefore they gathered in one of the Tower rooms the next night.
"Which village of forge-folk holds it? I think I have heard of it—this great lost matrix. It will not be altogether welcome to them—that such a matrix should go behind Tower walls and be lost to them, but I think I can persuade them."
Ronal did not doubt it; it would take a braver man than he knew to stand against the wishes of Leonie Hastur.
He supposed she had once been remarkably beautiful, this Keeper; certainly she had been behind Tower walls all of his life, and during most—if not all—of the lives of his parents—and for all he knew, of his grandparents. He found himself wondering how old she was; with some women, especially of Hastur blood, after they reached a certain age, it was impossible to tell their age because although they were not actually withered, or emaciated,

there was something about them; they might have been any age or none. It was still possible to see that Leonie had been beautiful, just possible; it was perhaps the only remnant of her humanity. She looked almost unreal in the stiff, formal Keeper's veils of deep crimson.
"I will go," she said. "Keep watch for me."
Thus saying, she slipped out of her body. To the young people watching, there was no apparent difference, except for an almost imperceptible slumping and a somewhat vacant look in the eyes that were still as blue as copper filings in flame, but they all knew she was not there. She had gone heaven knows where into that strange unknown realm of the overworld, where time and space were not tangible, and only thought existed. Things were not what they seemed in the overworld, but could under certain conditions be manipulated—by thought alone.
The night wore away; after a long time, Leonie—who had, to all appearances, .remained motionless in her chair—began to stir and struggle. Callista, instantly alert, murmured, "She's not breathing," but before she could intervene, Leonie pitched out of her chair, falling forward, in a flutter of crimson, breathing heavily in normal unconsciousness.
Ronal cried out, bending over to lift the Keeper. She half-roused at the touch, murmured, "Too strong for me—" and slipped back again into unconsciousness. Ronal lifted the apparently lifeless body and carried her into her shielded room. He waited there until Leonie's attendants had applied various restoratives and determined that she was suffering only from shock and exhaustion.
When he returned to the others, Hilary had already slipped into Leonie's vacated chair.
"No, Hilary," Ronal demurred. "If it was too strong for Leonie, what do you think you can do alone?"
"Do you know how much Leonie has been overworking lately?" Hilary shot back. "That is what led to her collapse; any task she might have undertaken could have done the same. And I will finish what she started. There is no question now that there is something to find, and

it must be found before they have time to transfer it to a better hiding place." As Ronal still hesitated, she added persuasively, "I might as well; I will be good for nothing tomorrow, and probably not for another tenday."
"Perhaps if you rest now—" Ronal began.
"No." Hilary shook her head definitely. "It doesn't work that way. Right now I'm riding on the wave of energy I always get a day in advance. We might as well take advantage of it."
Ronal shrugged helplessly; stronger men than he had failed to deter a Keeper when her mind was set on something.
"Besides, if I go now, at once, I can follow her traces," Hilary said.
And Ronal could say only, "You know best."
Hilary took her place in the chair, wrapping herself in a long woolly robe over her regular working robe, shrugged a bit to make herself comfortable, and slipped out of her body..
Hilary found herself at first on what appeared to be a
gray featureless plain, without visible landmarks except, behind her, the rising Tower of Arilinn—not the real Tower as it appeared in the outer world, but what she knew to be the idealized form of that structure. It had been a landmark in the overworld for many generations, and before it, Hilary saw shining footprints, tracks with a faint silver luster. Leonie's? Did she leave these marks for me?
Since her main thought had been to follow in Leonie's footprints, she set out quickly along the trail, knowing that it would fade to invisibility all too soon. She moved without conscious thought, unaware of the motions of walking; her only aim to follow that almost imperceptible trail before her where Leonie had gone. She was so intent on following in Leonie's footsteps that it seemed to her to be no time at all—though to the watchers in the outer world it was a considerable time—before she found herself at the entrance to a great dark cave, one of—she was not sure how she knew this, perhaps some intangible trace of Leonie's thought—a great labyrinth of caves which made networks all through the foothills

of the mountains. This was the home, she knew, of the strange people known as the forge-folk.
She had no personal knowledge of them, but she had been told by Leonie that they were the first group on Darkover to discover mastery over metals. Darkover was a metal-poor world; from the very earliest days, metal had assumed an almost sacred significance. The small amounts of metal necessary to shoe a horse, to edge a weapon, and other uses, dictated by necessity—in the beginning it had been necessary to make certain that the allocation of metals was made by real need, and not by greed. Still, human nature was always at work, and economic forces had also dictated some accommodation to human status desires which had nothing to do with actual need. Therefore, various political expediencies had made it desirable for powerful persons—and above all the Hasturs and the Comyn—to keep in favor with the forge-folk. Therefore they had been given certain privileges, especially relating to the use of matrixes, traditional from the days before the Ages of Chaos. But even with these privileges, Hilary thought, they should not be keeping a ninth-level matrix, even if it has become a sacred object to them. She should reclaim it for the Comyn, and for the Towers, where it could not be abused by anyone who might have a fancy to do so. Such a matrix represented a very real danger to the Comyn and to the people of the Domains. And if Hilary could recapture it, the danger was lessened.
The movement, at the speed of thought, had brought her past several glowing forges, and she began, dimly through the darkness of the caves, to sense, if not quite to see, the glowing nexus of a great matrix. Above it, shadowed—not perhaps a physical figure at all, Hilary could see, sketched dimly on the darkness, the figure of a woman, kneeling, golden chains enshrouding her, all faintly glowing flame-color. Sharra; the goddess of the forge-people, here imaged, not on their altar, exactly, but so near as made no matter
Now she could see it. In the Ages of Chaos, when this thing had first been shaped, it had been traditional to house these things in the shape of weapons; and this one was fashioned to be set in the hilt of a great two-handed

sword. Hilary moved swiftly to take up the sword in both hands. lt was surprisingly heavy. In the overworld she was accustomed to moving without weight, but an object like this—a matrix, she knew, had form and body through all the various levels of consciousness—had weight and substance even in the overworld. Now, she thought, I have it in my hands, and I shall return to Arilinn as swiftly as I can. She turned to retrace her steps, but as the matrix moved away from the altar, she heard a great cry.
Sharra! Protect us, golden-chained one!
Heaven help us, she thought. The forge-folk, even the guardian of the altar, were aware that the matrix had been touched by an intruder! Now what to do? In her astral form she could not physically struggle for it; her only hope lay in getting back to Arilinn so swiftly that they could not overtake her.
But which way was Arilinn? In the labyrinth of caves, she had become confused. Somehow she must find her way out. The traces, faintly shining, of her own footsteps on the way in were still there. She began to move along them, fighting for breath—it was smoky and hard to breathe. Well, that did not matter; Callista, monitoring her bodily functions would see to it that she kept breathing. She told herself firmly that the heat and smoke were illusions, and struggled on.
As she went on, retracing her earlier steps, she became aware of a glow. Neither ahead or behind her; it seemed to be actually beneath her feet. Down below, on a level somewhere below these astral caves, there was fire. They have set it here to frighten me, she thought, and tried to quicken her step as much as she could without losing sight of the faint trace of her own footsteps she needed to find her way back—back to Arilinn.
Beneath her feet, the very ground was beginning to burn. She went on, stepping carefully through the spreading patches of fire, reminding herself that the fire was illusion, intended to frighten her; it was not real. It cannot hurt me.
Now the very soles of her slippers were beginning to smolder; she felt sharp pain in the soles of her feet. It is only illusion, she told herself, clinging tightly to the

matrix, stepping gingerly over the floor of the cave and across the glowing flames. It is all an illusion—
Anguish seized her, and faintness; she stumbled, dropping the matrix. Before she could seize it again she was spiraling, choking, through layers of smoke, into a well-known room. She was in Arilinn, abruptly back in her body, conscious of burning pain through the soles of her feet, and Ronal and Callista were looking down at her in fright.