"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 10 - The Black Raven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

dreaming, no matter how urgently she wanted the dream to last forever. Other
times she would dream they were making love in their bed back in his family's
house, and from those dreams she woke in tears. Yet as time went on, those
dreams faded, to be replaced by something far stranger.
Many-towered cities rose in her nights, where she wandered with a lantern in
hand while she searched for something she'd lost, though she could put no name
to it. At other times she had walked in the city during a summer's day and
marvelled at the strange buildings and the people she saw among them. In the
centre of this city rose a hill, circled at intervals by five stone walls. At
the top, inside the highest wall, stood a fortress of some kind. In her dreams
all she could see were squat towers clustering behind the stone. Sometimes she
knew that she had to get into that fortress; in other dreams, she needed to
escape it - though paradoxically, she never dreamt of being inside it.
When she woke of a morning, she would lie in bed and marvel at how clearly she
saw the dream city. Even though its central hill reminded her of Citadel, the
rest of it - the buildings, the people's clothing - looked nothing like Cerr
Cawnen, the only city she'd ever seen. By brooding over the dream images this
way she reinforced them, so that the city took a permanent form. Whenever she
went back, the same houses and shops would occupy the same locations; the same
hill would loom over the familiar streets.
Finally Niffa turned bold. When in her dream she came to its gate, she walked
through. All around the city lay meadows where the grass grew as high as her
waist, but narrow paths ran through them. She followed one a little ways down
the road, stopping often to look back at the towered hill to keep within its
sight, but she woke before she'd gone far. Over the next few nights she would
walk a little way through these meadows, then rush back to the city before it
could disappear. She had learned, just lately, that things you loved could
disappear without warning.
Eventually, as she walked through the grass she saw far off to one side
something gleaming like fire in the green, but no smoke rose. She left the
road and struggled through the grass under a sky growing dim with twilight.
Off to her right a huge purple moon trembled on the horizon as night deepened.
When she looked back, the city walls still rose nearby, with here and there a
point of lantern light upon them. The sight gave her the courage to keep going
toward the fire-gleam, a strange red glow like a beacon in the grass.
Two huge five-pointed stars, each taller than a man and twined of stranded red
and gold light, hung in the air just above a stretch of beaten-down grass.
Between them the earth opened into the mouth of a tunnel sloping down into
some unseeable darkness. On the other side of the stars someone was standing
in the grass - a woman, judging from her long ash-blonde hair, but she wore
tight leather trousers and a tunic rather than dresses.
'Here!' the woman called out. You're not Raena.'
'And I do thank every god in my heart for that,' Niffa called back. 'Who be
you?'
The woman walked around the stars and stood looking her over with her hands on
her hips. Niffa had never seen anyone so beautiful, or so she thought at first
glance. She had silver blonde hair with silver eyes that matched it. Her
features were even and perfect - but her ears! They were long and strangely
furled like a new fern in spring.
'My name is Dallandra,' the woman said at last. 'And I made these wards to