"Stephen Lawhead - Celtic Crusades 01 - The Iron Lance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

floor.
I compose myself for whatever will happen next, and I hear a low scraping
sound, like chalk dragging slowly across a blackboard. This goes on for a
time, and then I feel cold air on the left side of my face - as if a door has
opened to the draught. At the same time, ropes are attached to either side of
the padded band around my waist, and then I am securely tied. The others are
standing around me now, towering over me.
Suddenly, my feet are grasped and I am spun like a terrapin on my back. When
my feet are released once more, I feel that there is nothing beneath them - my
feet dangle over open space. I am allowed no time to reflect on this, for at
almost the same instant I am gently pulled forward, allowing my feet, ankles,
and legs to slide down into emptiness. My arms are taken up, the ropes pulled
taut, and I feel myself slipping into the hole which has been opened in the
floor.
Slowly, I descend into the void, dangling at the end of my ropes like a
puppet.
The chamber into which I am lowered is immense. I cannot say how I know this -
perhaps the size is suggested by the chill of the air and the sound of my
breathing echoing back from unseen walls. My eyes are bound; I see nothing.
Down and down I go.
At last, my feet touch solid ground once more; I gather my legs under me and
stand. I cannot tell how far I have descended. The voice falling down to me
from directly overhead reaches me as an echo merely: 'Seeker . . .' it is
Pemberton, 'with the eyes of faith, I bid you seek . . . and may you truly
find.'
At this, the ropes go slack as they are thrown in after me. This puppet's
strings have been cut, as it were, and it is for me to find my own way, to
seek. But what . . . what am I seeking? What am I meant to find? None of my
previous experiences with the Brotherhood have prepared me for this test. I
will stand or fall by my own efforts.
As I am a seeker, I decide, I will do as I am told. Although the object of my
search remains a mystery, I will have faith enough to believe that I shall
recognize the prize when I find it.
Thus resolved, I take my first faltering steps into the cave - for that is how
I think of it, an immense subterranean cavern, a vast hollow chamber of stone
deep under the earth. I take three steps into the clinging darkness, and I
stop. I am no longer steady on my feet. I feel light-headed, as if I am
floating.
Nevertheless, I take a deep breath and proceed.
I turn slowly, first left, then right. I seem to feel the faintest breath of
air on my cheek when I face the right, and so I decide to pursue the search in
this direction. It is a whim, nothing more, but it is rewarded by the fact
that after a dozen or so measured paces, I reach a step.
I stoop and feel the edge of the step with my hands; it rises to others behind
it. I mount the first three, then three more, then another, and I am arrived
upon a platform, which I take to be cut into the cavern wall.
I speak a word and judge by the reverberation of the sound that I have entered
a smaller chamber, open to the larger - a vestibule of sorts. Stretching my
hands before me like a blind man - truly, I am a blind man - I shuffle forward
to explore the chamber to which I have ascended.