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

at least a chance of escaping the wrath of the witches. Also, I became once more a
warrior—of sorts.

The final blow, decided upon by the Council, to finish Karsten, gave us our chance.
While the Witches drew all power to their bidding—to stir the mountains of the south as a
cook would stir a pudding in the kettle—Kyllan and I met once more at Estford, which had
been home to us. And we rode together through a night of turmoil, to bring our sister out
of the trap which had held her so long.
Then did we go east, to find Escore, that riven land from which the Old Race had
come in the far, far past, where the powers of both good and ill had been unleashed to
walk as they would, wearing strange guises. We strove with those powers, separately and
together. Kyllan, having used part of his gift on our behalf, laid himself open to the
possession of one of these forces, and, while the cost to him was high in peril and pain, it
brought us to the People of Green Silences and into their sanctuary.

They were not wholly of our blood. Even as we were not wholly of the Old Race,
sharing the inheritance from our father who had come from another space and time.
Though they had in them some of the Old Race, yet for the rest they were older still,
being akin to the land in a way which those of my blood are not. But then, in Escore there
are many legends we had heard in our childhood which lived to walk, burrow, fly.
Then a geas was laid on Kyllan, by what Power we had no telling. And under it he
went back across the mountains to Estcarp. From him spread a kind of need—I do not
know the proper words for its description—which settled into some of the Old Race, who
had been driven out of Karsten during the Kolder War and since had been a restless,
homeless people. When he came back to us, they followed him.
Not only fighting men came so, but also their women and children, bringing all that
they could to enable them to set up households in this new land. The Men of the Green
Silences under Dahaun, their Lady (she who had succored Kyllan during his great peril),
and Ethutur, their warlord, aided them over the cliffs and brought them to the safe
Valley.


So much have I written in this chronicle, and perhaps it repeats what is already a too
familiar tale. But it has been set upon me to add this to the record begun by Kyllan. This
is my portion of the story, which stands a little apart from the history of the Great War,
though it has a rightful place in that, since it helped in bringing about the final victory.

Rightfully, my adventure begins in the Valley—which was a lightsome place in which
the heart could rejoice.

Through the years the ones who dwelt there had set such Symbols and bonds about
it that it remained free of all evil—a place in which a man could take his ease. I knew those
Symbols from my studies at Lormt and I thought them high protection.
Peaceful as it was in the Valley, we could not give ourselves to rest there, for about us
the whole of Escore was astir. Long ago this land had been riven time and time again with
wars as great as those which now gnawed our homeland in the west. Here men and
women had sought knowledge, and then passed beyond the bonds set by prudence for
such seeking. There arose those who sought power for the sake of power alone; and from
that always issues the Shadow which is darker than any night. There was a drawing apart
and some of the Old Race retreated over the mountains, wrecking behind them all roads,