"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 06 - A Time Of Omens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

road, paved with limestone blocks, through the smallish town that had sprung up near the temples. In
among the round, thatched houses townsfolk and visitors strolled around or sat in the windows of one of
the many inns, and peddlers kept accosting her with trays of sweetmeats or baskets of little silver medals
and pottery souvenirs. She brushed them all off and strode on her way, skirting the main complex, too,
bustling with visitors and priests here in the summer season, and took a little-used path that ran southeast
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through pine trees, all twisted and bowed down from the constant wind. In a little bay of rocky shore a
jetty stood with a ferry bobbing at anchor beside it. Beyond, a scant mile away, she could see the rise of
East Island, a long sliver of land that most visitors knew or cared nothing about.

“Jill, halloo!” The ferryman, a stout priest draped in an orange cloak, waved both hands at her as she led
her horses gingerly down the steep path. “Back so soon?”

“I am, at that. How have things been? Quiet?”

“They always are, out our way.” He grinned, revealing brown and broken teeth. “His holiness has pains
in his joints again.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t all as bent and stiff as village crones, frankly, out here in the fog.”

“True, true. But well, we’ve got a bit of sun today at least. Enjoy it while we can, say I.”

Since the tide was running out, the journey was quick and easy, though the ferryman was bound to have
a harder trip rowing back by himself. Jill coaxed her horses off, left him sighing at the job ahead, and
headed across a wind-scoured meadow to a complex much smaller and plainer than those of the main
island. At the base of a low hill stood a clutter of roundhouses and a stables, shaded by a few stunted
oaks. Dust drifted and swirled over the threadbare lawns and sickly vegetable gardens. She turned her
horses over to a groom, carried her saddlebags and bedroll to a hut that did for a guest house, dumped
her gear onto the narrow cot, and decided that she’d unpacked. With a deferential bob of his head, a
servant came in, bringing her a washbasin and a pitcher of water.

“His holiness is in the library.”

“I’ll join him there.”

After she washed up, she lingered in the silence for a moment to get her questions clear in her mind. Like
all the other pilgrims, she’d come to Wmm’s temple for help in making a decision, in her case about a
voyage to the far-lying islands of the Bardekian archipelago, a very major undertaking indeed in those
days. It was likely that she’d be gone for years and almost as likely that she wouldn’t even find what she
was looking for, the translation of a single word that she’d found inscribed inside a ring. The word,
written in Elvish characters though it made no sense at all in any language, might have been a name or
sheer nonsense for all that she knew. What she did know, in the mysterious way that dweomermasters
have, was that the inscription would make the difference between life and death to thousands of people,
men and elves alike. When, she didn’t exactly know. Someday, perhaps even soon.

She suspected—but only suspected—that the answer lay in Bardek. She was hoping that the priests of