"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

gleeful tendrils into the bright summer air down the length of the hedge.
The hedge was ruined! It was doubtless dying! How could it support the parasitic ivy and still
manage to keep —
Gwendylyr realised suddenly that she was very, very afraid. There was no dividing line
between order and disorder, was there? It was all a lie. Disorder would win every time. It could
never be kept at bay.
Gwendylyr backed slowly away, terrified that one of those tendrils would reach out and
snatch at her at any moment. Where could she hide? Was there anywhere to hide? Perhaps the
cellar ... surely the dark would keep the ivy at bay ... the dark would be safe... safe...
Gwendylyr stopped, appalled. She would hide herself in the dark the rest of her life to avoid
disorder?
Was that a life at all?
 She swallowed, stepped forward, raised an arm, and took one of the waving tendrils gently in
her hand.
"Very pleased to make your acquaintance," she said.
"Likewise, I am sure," said the ivy, and the sun exploded and showered both hedge and ivy
and Gwendylyr in freedom.

"Leagh?" said Gwendylyr.

"No! No!" Leagh screamed, and grabbed at her belly.
It was completely flat. Barren.
As barren as the landscape about her. She ran, more than half-doubled over her empty belly,
through a plain of hot red pebbles. A dry wind blew in her face, whipping her hair about her eyes.
The sky was dull and grey, full of leaden dreams.
"No, no," she whispered. She was trapped in a land that had stolen her child to feed its own
hopelessness. Both sky and ground were sterile, and both had trapped her.
"No." Leagh sank to the ground, gasping in pain at the heat of the pebbles, and then
ignoring the burns to curl up in a ball.
Nothing was left. Best to just give up. Best to die.
Nothing worth living for.
She cried, her breath jerking up through her chest and throat in great gouts of misery. She
wanted to die. Why couldn't she die? Wasn't there anyone about who could help her to
die? Why couldn't someone fust put a knife to her (hopelessly barren) belly and slide it in? The
pain would be nothing compared to this ... this horror that surrounded her.
This desert. This barrenness.
Leagh cried harder, and grabbed at a handful of pebbles, loathing them with an intensity she
had never felt for anything or anyone before. She threw them viciously away from her, then
grabbed at another handful, throwing them away as well.
When she grabbed at her third handful she stopped, aghast at her actions.
Why blame the land for her misfortunes? If she had lost the child she carried, then how could
she blame this desert?
A cool breeze blew across and lifted the hair from her face.
A tiny rock squirrel inched across her hand, its tiny velvety nose investigating her palm for
food.
Leagh smiled, and then laughed as she felt a welcome heaviness in her belly. She
rested her hand over her stomach and felt the thudding of her child's heart, then ...
... then she gasped in wonder and scrabbled her other hand deep in among the pebbles about
her.
A heartbeat thudded out from the belly of the earth as well, and it matched —