"Kerr,.Katharine.-.Deverry.03.-.Bristling.Wood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

wandered around. Ebaсy and Tanidario sat on the edge near a little
group of Forest Folk. Although they looked like the other elves,
they were dressed in rough leather clothes, and each man carried
a small notched stick, bound with feathers and colored thread,
which were considered magical among their kind. Although they
normally lived in the dense forests to the north, at times they drifted
south to trade with the rest of the People. Since they had never
been truly civilized, the events that they were gathered to
remember had spared them.

Gradually the crowd quieted, and the children sat down by their
parents. On the platform four bards, Devaberiel among them, took
their places at the back, arms crossed over their chests, legs
braced a little apart, a solemn honor guard for the storyteller.
Manaver Contariel’s son, the eldest of them all, came forward and
raised his arms high in the air. With a shock, Ebaсy realized that
this would be the last year that this bard would retell the story. He
was starting to show his age, his hair white and thin, his face
pouched and wrinkled. When one of the People aged, it meant
death was near.

“His father was there at the Burning,” Tanidario whispered.

Ebaсy merely nodded his acknowledgment, because Manaver was
lowering his arms.

“We are here to remember.” His highly trained voice seemed to
boom out in the warm stillness.

“To remember,” the crowd sighed back. “To remember the west.”

“We are here to remember the cities, Rinbaladelan of the Fair
Towers, Tanbalapalim of the Wide River, Bravelmelim of the
Rainbow Bridges, yea, to remember the cities, and the towns, and
all the marvels of the far, far west. They have been taken from us,
they lie in ruins, where the owls and the foxes prowl, and weeds
and thistles crack the courtyards of the palaces of the Seven
Kings.”

The crowd sighed wordlessly, then settled in to listen to the tale
that some had heard five hundred times or more. Even though he
was half a Deverry man, Ebaсy felt tears rise in his throat for the
lost splendor and the years of peace, when in the hills and well-
watered plains of the far west, the People lived in cities full of
marvels and practiced every art and craft until their works were so
perfect that some claimed them dweomer.

Over a thousand years ago, so long that some doubted when the
Burning had begun, whether it was a thousand and two hundred
years or only a thousand and one, several millions of the People