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

because I don’t think it can live on light alone, as we do. You might have
to experiment a bit to find something it can digest, but I’m sure that
you’re clever enough to solve that problem. You’ll need to keep it clean
as well. Infant man-creatures tend to be messy. Then, after a few years,
you might want to teach it to talk. There are things it’s going to need to
tell us, and if it can’t talk, it won’t be able to pass them on to us.’
‘What could one of these creatures tell us that we don’t already know?’
‘Dreams, Zelana, dreams. We don’t sleep, so we don’t dream. That
baby in your arms is a Dreamer. That’s why I brought her to you.’
‘It’s a girl, then?’ Zelana’s voice softened.
‘Naturally. I didn’t think you’d get along very well with a boy. Care
for her, Zelana, and I’ll drop by in a few years to see how she’s coming
along.’
The baby in Zelana’s arms made a cooing sound and reached out one
tiny hand to touch Zelana’s face.
‘Oh,’ Zelana said in a trembling, almost stricken voice, clasping the
infant more closely to her.
Dahlaine smiled. It had turned out rather well, he congratulated
himself. All it had taken to totally enslave his brother and both of his
sisters had been a few peeps and coos and one soft touch from an infant
hand. He might have gloated a bit more, but his own baby Dreamer was
home alone, and it was almost feeding time, so he really should get on
back.
He swam out of Zelana’s grotto and remounted his well-trained
lightning bolt. Lightning bolts are noisy steeds, there’s no question about
that, but they can cover vast distances in the blink of an eye.


Zelana’s first problem with her new charge was finding something to
feed it. She rather hoped that Dahlaine had been mistaken. If the infant
could live on light alone, as Zelana herself did, feeding it would be no
problem. The vein of pink quartz in the ceiling of the grotto concentrated
the sunlight into a glowing pink pool which was presently centered on the
bed of moss where Zelana occasionally rested. Hopefully, she laid the
fur-robed bundle on that moss bed and turned the robe back to allow the
sunlight to touch the child.
The infant began to fuss a bit. Maybe the little creature didn’t like the
color. Zelana had discovered that a steady diet of pink light took a bit of
getting used to. Pink, it appeared, was an acquired taste.
Zelana snapped her fingers, and the quartz obediently turned blue. The
baby didn’t stop fussing, though, and her discontent was growing louder.
Zelana tried green, but that didn’t work either. Then she tried plain
white. It was a little bland, but perhaps the baby wasn’t ready for
advanced colors yet.
 The sounds the infant was making grew louder and more insistent.
Zelana quickly gathered the squalling infant in her arms and hurried
down to the edge of the shallow pool at the mouth of the grotto.
‘Meeleamee!’ she called in the piping language of the dolphins, ‘I need
your help! Soon! Please!’
Now Meeleamee had mothered many, many young, so she had great