"Andre Norton - Witch World - The Turning 05 - Ciara's Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

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Ciara's Song by Andre
Norton
A Word About the Chronicles of the Witch
World
Andre Norton

What seeker of knowledge can say with truth that the history of Witch
World has been wholly preserved, even in the masses of parchment rolls,
the wood-bound books, or those metal plates of yet earlier date engraved
in tongues that have not been used for a millennium or more?

Where lie the life stories of those who raised the walls of that ruined
city in the far South, site of a battle waged but yesterday? Whence came
all the flotsam and jetsam of clans and races, whose only memories and
records do not stretch back even to their arrival through one of the world
gates?

Yes, even though those portals giving upon all the other dimensions
have been closed, still there are many tales worth the telling to be found by
delving into the Archives at Lormt. For centuries, Lormt acted as a
depository for the histories of families and the keeping of clan lines, so
that kinfolk widely separated by war or witchery might possibly find those
of their blood again. There also, far in the past, the custom began for
clans, families, and even solitary rovers to leave accounts of their own
journeyings, battles, and victories, thereby illuminating some small facet
of the history they knew, having acted within it—and, perhaps, upon it as
well. Thus, records left by even single wanderers are to be found there,
piled against official reports of vanished kingdoms.
 It has now absorbed the attention of some of the burrowing scholars to
search out accounts concerning events that they may have been involved
in themselves but which they found hard to comprehend as being
experienced simultaneously by unknown others. These seekers have
included those tied to forceful action in the past and determined to leave
for the future some detailing of the roots and branches of the tree of their
tale. Such enlargers of the Witch World's store of lore are Ouen and the
Lady Mereth.

In a time of relative peace, when the inroads made by the Dark from
without are no longer to be feared (though still, and ever, guarded against)
these earlier tales are mined by songsmiths, and some mighty sagas have
been wrought from even modest accounts. Thus, Lormt is now not only
what it has always been—a treasure-house of ancient knowledge— but, in