"David Eddings - The Dreamers 01 - The Elder gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

at the outer edge of the air. You can even see the curve of the world from
that high.’
‘Does it really curve?’ Aracia asked. ‘Veltan told me that if you look at
Father Earth from the moon, he looks like a round blue ball.’ She
frowned. ‘I never did understand just why it was that Mother Sea exiled
Veltan to the moon for all those eons. Did he do something to offend
her?’
Zelana laughed. ‘Indeed he did, Aracia. He told her that she bored
him.’
‘He didn’t!’
‘Oh, yes he did. He told her that she’d be much more interesting if she
varied her shades of blue now and then. He even went so far as to suggest
stripes. He kept pestering her about it until she lost her temper and told
him to go away. That’s why our baby brother spent ten thousand years on
the moon.’
‘And he passed the time cataloging shades of blue,’ Aracia added.
‘That seems to be his major preoccupation.’
‘How many shades of blue has he found so far?’
‘Something in excess of thirteen million that last time I spoke with
him. That was about an eon or so ago, though, so he’s probably found
more by now.’
‘There’s Mount Shrak,’ Zelana told her sister, pointing toward the
earth far below. ‘Let’s go and see if Dahlaine’s managed to track Veltan
down yet.’
 They descended through the lambent air toward the craggy peak of
Mount Shrak, startling a flock of geese as they went. Zelana rather liked
geese. They were silly birds most of the time, but their migrations marked
the change of the seasons very precisely, and that added a certain stability
to an unpredictable world.
The sisters came to earth near the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave, and
Zelana led Aracia down the long, winding passage toward their brother’s
underground home.
‘Hideous,’ Aracia observed, looking around. ‘Did he put all those
icicles on the ceiling himself?’
‘They aren’t ice, dear sister,’ Zelana replied ‘They’re stone. They grow
the same way icicles grow, but they take quite a bit longer.’
‘He’ll starve to death if he lives here in the dark for too long,’ Aracia
observed.
‘He has a little sun that follows him here in his cave,’ Zelana said. ‘It’s
like a puppy, and it gives him all the light he needs.’
‘He’s manufacturing suns now?’ Aracia seemed a bit startled. ‘I tried
that once, but the silly thing flew apart as soon as I started to make it
spin.’
‘You probably didn’t make it heavy enough. The balance of a sun has
to be very precise - too light and it flies apart; too heavy and it collapses
in on itself.’
Aracia looked around cautiously. ‘Where’s Dahlaine’s Dreamer?’ she
whispered.
‘Ashad? Dahlaine told me that he was out playing with the bears. We
all seem to have our favorite animals, don’t we? I love my pink dolphins,