"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 2 - Dragon Token" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

He stood among them, not apart, though the wide place among the twisting rocks had been chosen partly for the flat stone just behind him, upon which he was meant to stand while he spoke. But he found himself unable to stand above them, even though the position he now held was at the pinnacle of his world.

They waited in patient silence for him to collect his thoughts. When at last he spoke, his words rang like a steel sword off stone.

"My father . . . was a man to whom life had given the truth of himself. A rare and precious gift, more important than the power he was heir to in the Desert, and the power he was given when he became High Prince."

*

"... who understood power, both of his person and his position. My kinsman was a man in whose presence all of us felt more alive. His was the silent challenge to know and to learn, to do our work and excel at it—and then to surpass ourselves. But this he did with kindness, and understanding for our frailties and the difficulty of the task. He was called Azhrei not because he was fearsome, but because he was strong enough to shelter us beneath his wings. . . ."

Andry paused, sudden memory interrupting his train of thought. He could see before him as clearly as in a Fire-conjuring two little boys and a cloak-draped "dragon." Wings fluttered and merry blue eyes peered out at the would-be heroes, daring them to attack the fearsome dragon with their wooden toy swords.

*

"My father was a man of great power. His strength of mind and heart, his wisdom and his courage, these things all of you know. But perhaps the greatest of his strengths was that he understood power and was wary of it. As High Prince, with the wealth of the Desert behind him, and with a formidable Sunrunner as his Princess, he might have taken any land he fancied and ruled only to please himself. But he did not. That was the true greatness of his power, as he saw it: that he so rarely used

it."

But everything he ever taught me or told me is useless to me now. What good is law and gentle persuasion and waiting for the right moment to act when the world is collapsing around me? I love you, Father, I admire you, and everything I'm saying now is true. But why didn't you ever teach me the things I really needed to know? How do I defeat these barbarians with laws written on a parchment page?

*

"... and the world is a more threatening place without him. In his last season of life he saw lands ravaged and castles razed. He saw battles that killed his people. And all that he kept safe is safe no longer."

Once more Andry paused, the two visions of Radzyn hovering in his mind. One in flames, the scene of years of nightmares; the other as it was now, intact and proud but echoing to Vellanti footfalls. Andry had seen destruction that meant the enemy had no usable base in the Desert. Reality was a keep still whole but given over to

their ease and comfort. Which was failure, and which was victory?

He didn't know anymore.

"Our task now is to restore the peace that he cherished more than his own life. And those who think that he failed will learn otherwise. He lived, and he kept us safe. That was his gift to us. With his silent challenge before us—to do our work as well as we know how, and then to do it even better—we cannot fail. With his example living still, especially in the hearts of those who knew him best, we will know that safety again."

Andry lifted both arms slowly, and slowly every candle lit as if a breath of Fire blew across the wicks one by one. The fields before him blazed to life with flames that burned to mark a death.

Torien, as Chief Steward of Goddess Keep, led the Sunrunners and castlefolk out to the walls, where the candles were placed in the soft ground. They filed back through the gates.

Jayachin came forward to place her own candle and that of her little boy. After her shuffled nearly three thousand others, and by the time it was done the tiny Fires embraced the foundation stones like a half-moat of white and gold.

Andry wondered if anyone else saw it the way he did: incomplete, as if one saw the top half of a ring and assumed that it indeed circled the whole finger, not knowing it was a sham and a deception.

But it was Rohan the flames symbolized. It could not be a Sunrunner's ring. His had been only a halfling gift. So perhaps the half-circle of light was appropriate after all.

*

There were no candles at the Court of the Storm God. Pol raised one hand and called Fire to unlit torches. Bright as day they blazed, making stone beacons of the pale yellow and orange and dark russet of the spires.

He thought of the Fire that still burned, spilling down

from the Flametower at Stronghold. And of another fire that should have replaced it, but would remain unlit for what he suspected would be a long time. His own fire.