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

as the great Minstrelsea Forest.
Which, after only forty-two years of life, Qeteb had then turned to matchsticks.
Matchsticks! Ur rolled the word over and over in her mind, using it as both curse and promise of
revenge.
Matchsticks.
Ur's beloved had been reviled, murdered, and utterly destroyed by the excrement of the universe.
Her lips tightened away from her teeth — incongruously white and square — and Ur silently snarled
at her ravaged garden. Revenge ...
"It is not good to think such thoughts," the Mother said, and laid Her hand on Ur's gaunt thigh.
Ur closed her lips into a thin hard line, and she did not speak.
The Mother fought again to repress a sigh and looked instead out to the forest beyond Ur's decaying
garden.
Everything was fading. The forests of the Sacred Groves, even the Horned Ones themselves. The
Mother had not realised how closely tied to Tencendor the Groves were — as was the health of all who
resided in them. Tencendor had been wasted, and if DragonStar could not right the wrong of
Qeteb and his companion Demons, and finish what the Enemy had begun so many aeons before, then
eventually the Groves would die.
As would Herself, and all the Horned Ones, and even perhaps Ur.
The Mother shot another glance at the ancient nursery-keeper. And perhaps not. Ur appeared to be
keeping lively enough on her diet of unremitting need for revenge.
"But We are safe enough for the while," the Mother whispered. "Safe enough for the while."

Chapter 3
A Son Lost, A Friend Gained

Sanctuary should have been crowded. Over the past weeks hundreds of thousands of people, as well
millions of sundry insects, animals and birds, had swarmed across the silver tracery bridge, along the
roadway meandering through the fields of wildflowers and grasses and into the valley mouth. Yet despite
the influx of such numbers, Sanctuary continued to remain a place of delightful spaces and
untrodden paths, of thermals that seemingly rose into infinite heights, and Mazes of corridors in its
palaces that appeared perpetually unexplored.
Sanctuary had absorbed the populations of Tencendor without a murmur, and without a
single bulge. It had absorbed and embraced them, offering them peace and comfort and endless
pleasantness.
And yet for many, Sanctuary felt more like a prison. The endless peace and comfort and
pleasantness had begun to slide into endless irritation and odious boredom which found
temporary release in occasional physical conflict (an ill-tempered slap to a face, a harder than needed
smack to a child's legs) and more frequent spiteful words.
For others, it was more personal aggravations that made them feel like prisoners in a vast,
amiable gaol.
StarDrifter, wandering the corridors and wondering what more he could do to ease Zenith into the
love she tried to deny.
 Zenith herself, wondering when it was that she would be able to think of StarDrifter's embrace with
longing instead of revulsion.
DareWing, dying, yet still driven by such a need for revenge that he hauled himself from tree to tree
and from glade to glade, seeking that which might ease his frustration.
Azhure, weeping for the children she had lost.
Isfrael, seething with resentment at the loss of his inheritance.
Faraday, her eyes dry but her heart burning, wondering if she would have the courage to accept a
love she feared might once more end in her destruction.