Nightfall [antikvár]

CHAPTER1The great arch clung to heaven for support. Over the centuries the wall on one side of it had crumbled away, leaving only two huge stones to support it. It swam a little in her exhausted gaze like a mirage. Was it an ancient Moorish palace? Fort? Whatever it was it shrieked of abandonment, which was what had beckoned her across the valley. The long climb up from the valley had strained the young body to its uttermost limits, and now she leaned against the stones of the topmost bancal, the highest of a series of ascending terraces, on which the Moors had built these vast structures, and turned her fierce gaze on the edifice, asking unsuitable questions: Is God an illusion or is he not the sole reality? Does God exist only because I want him to?She was in a state of exaltation close to ecstasy. Hunger and exhaustion mostly. She had not eaten for three days. She had walked the last ten miles, burrowing into the interior of the island like an animal seeking shelter. Her mind rang like a bells7