"Sara Douglass - Crucible 1 - The Nameless Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

Originally published: Sydney, : Voyager, 2000. (The Crucible ; bk. I).
ISBN 0-765-30362-0
EAN 978-0765-30362-2
I. Michael (Archangel)—Fiction. 2. Fourteenth century—Fiction. 3. Spiritual warfare—Fiction. 4.
Good and evil—Fiction. 5. Demonology—Fiction. 6. Angels—Fiction. 7. Friars—Fiction. 8.
Plague—Fiction. 9. Europe—Fiction. I. Title.
in memory of my most devoted fan, michael goodwin
ioth September 1981—i6th March 1998
PR96i9.D672N36 2004 823*.9i4—dczz
2004044085
First Tor Edition: July 2004
Printed in the United States of America
0987654321




CONTENTS

Author's Note Prologue
Rome
Germany
France
England
Epilogue
Glossary
A Jigge (for Margrett)




AUTHOR'S NOTE
TIME TRAVEL is not only theoretically possible, travel into our future has already
been achieved (albeit on a tiny scale of a few seconds or minutes). Travel into our
past is more problematic. How would interfering with our past affect our present?
Some physicists argue that sending someone into the past creates a "parallel
universe"—the mere presence of someone in a past time alters that world's future to
such an extent that a different future is necessarily created: a parallel universe (or
world) to the one we live in.
The three books of "The Crucible" are set, not in the medieval Europe of our past,
but in the medieval Europe of a parallel universe: the insertion of even one fictional
character among a host of historical characters necessarily creates that parallel
world. Thus, while there are many similarities between our past and the world of
"The Crucible," there are also many differences. The entire period of the Hundred
Years War, for example, has been compressed so that the Battle of Poitiers is fought
at a later date than in our past, and Joan of Arc appears at an earlier date.
Although some dates and "facts" have altered, the spirit of "The Crucible" remains
identical to that of our medieval Europe. Something strange happened in the
fourteenth century ... something very, very odd. The fourteenth century was an age
of unprecedented catastrophe for western Europe: widespread famine due to climate