"Gordon R. Dickson - Dragon Knight 08 - The Dragon in Lyonesse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

“Well, you don’t even need to ask for that! Anything I can do...” Angie was sending up signals, but Jim
ignored them. “Look, why don’t you just tell us all about it before I make any more bad guesses?”

“I am easier doing that,” said Dafydd. “Well, then, two weeks past, it fell that I heard from the Drowned
Land. Word came to me from my King there, whom you once met, with an urgency to see me now. I
went below the waves, accordingly; and we two spoke privily. You must know that among us, those of
the Old Blood feel things others do not; and he had not been alone there in feeling a presence- not quite
yet upon his Drowned Land itself, but casting a growing shadow toward it; as the shadow of a
thundercloud goes before it to darken the landscape.”

“And did you feel that, too, when you were down there?” Angie said.

Dafydd looked quickly at her.

“I did that,” he said, “from the moment I set foot on that ancient earth. The shadow of it has not left me
since. I feel it even here, now, in your Hall.”

He stopped speaking, looking at them.

Jim’s and Angie’s eyes went to each other unthinkingly. Jim could have sworn there had been nothing
different about the Hall until Dafydd’s last word. But now there was; and, gazing at each other, he and
Angie each knew the other was also feeling whatever had come into it.

It was nothing visible or audible. The morning sun still streamed with September brilliance through the
narrow windows from the bright sky outside. The freshly laid and kindled fires in the three big fireplaces
still threw up their flames, doing their best to warm the overnight chill of the large, empty stone Hall in
which they burned; but both Jim and Angie now felt darkness like a weightless finger laid upon them.

Jim’s rebellious inner core, normally sleeping in him, woke suddenly and unexpectedly. He had argued
with Angie and scorned his servants for their quickness to believe in things supernatural. But this was
different.

This was an uninvited intrusion into the place that was his and Angie’s-ALONE!

A fury as primeval and instinctive as that of Aargh, the English wolf, bared its teeth within him.

“Out!” he shouted to the empty air above him, careless of consequences. “Out of my Hall, my home!
You’ve no power under this roof! GO!”

As he shouted, not even thinking of what the cost might be, in magical energy or life itself, he thrust with
all the power of magic he had developed in him against what hung above them-and all at once, beneath
the dark rooftrees, there was nothing where it had been. Nothing at all.

Chapter Two

For a long moment more, like a wolf filling the entrance of his den, teeth bared and snarling at an enemy,
Jim went on staring up at what was no longer there under the shadow of the sharply slanted roof.

Then he became aware of a taste of blood in his mouth, felt with his tongue against his teeth and found