"Andre Norton - Witch World - Warlock of the Witch World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

her hair close braided beneath a scarlet hood, her gloved hands holding tightly to my
sword belt, went with me on Shil.
“Please, lord, where do we ride?” Her voice was a clear pipe.

“To where the lady leads us.” I gave her the truth. “This is her country and she
knows it well. I am Kemoc Tregarth, and who are you?”

“Loelle, of the House of Mohakar, Lord Kemoc. Why do those birds fly with the lady?
Ah, that is no bird, it—it is a little man!”
One of the Flannan beat wings, hovering shoulder high beside Dahaun, while she
turned her head to look at him.

“A Flannan, Loelle. Have you not heard tales of them?”

I felt her grip grow tighter. “But those—those are tales, Lord Kemoc! Nurse Grenwel
said they were but stories, not the truth!”
“In Escore, Loelle, many old stories are true. Now, hold tight—“

We had come to a level space and the Renthan burst into speed to shame any horse
out of Estcarp, Dahaun setting the pace. That brooding menace I had felt in the foothills
was almost tangible as the clouds gathered, twilight dark, over us.

Through that gloom were glimmers of light, reminding me of the ghostly “candles”
we had seen on tree and bush that night when the Witches of Estcarp had readied their
power for the mountain twisting. Pale, hardly to be distinguished from the general gloom,
these clung to a rock, a bush, a twisted tree. Looking upon them, I knew that I did not
want to see them any closer.

Once more the land began to rise, and on the crown of a small hill stood some stones.
Not gray, but blue in hue, and they glowed. Once before had we refuged with such stones,
when Kaththea and I had fled after Kyllan had disappeared, taking sanctuary in a place
where a great altar of such blue had been our guard.
To this place Dahaun brought us. This was no standing circle of pillars about an altar
stone, but rather scattered blocks, as if a building, once there, had been shattered into
rubble. But the blue glow welcomed us and we slid down from the Renthan with a sense of
freedom from that which had followed us from the mountain’s foot.
Dahaun broke a branch from a bush which grew among the stones, and, holding that
in her hand, she walked down the hill, to beat the leafy end against the ground. So she
encircled the entire hill, appearing to draw some unseen protective barrier about it. Then,
as she came back to us, she stopped now and again to pull leaves and twigs from plants.

When the Green Lady was back among us she had her cloak gathered to form a
shallow bag and in that was her herb harvest. There had been a fire kindled in a sheltered
spot between two stones and she stood by that, tossing into it first a pinch of this, and
then three or four leaves of that. Smoke puffed out, bringing an aromatic scent. This
Dahaun fanned so that it wreathed among our company.
 As the smoke cleared and I could see better again, I noted the darkness had grown.
In that unnatural twilight the “candles” were brighter. But the light burning in them did
not spread far. It also seemed to me that there was movement beyond the hill, a stirring
which could only be half seen, to vanish if one looked straightly at the suspected spot.