"David Eddings - The Dreamers 02 - The Treasured One" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

‘She and Yaltar are out in that meadow just beyond the trees,’ Red-Beard told me.
‘Planter’s looking after them.’

‘Who’s Planter?’

‘She’s the one who teaches the women of the tribe how to grow food,’ Red-Beard
explained, ‘and the one the women go to when they have problems. She can be a little
blunt sometimes, but she knows what she’s doing.’

‘You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you, Dahlaine?’ Zelana asked
pointedly.

‘I was just getting to that, dear sister. Ashad’s dream was fairly specific about the
invasion of Veltan’s Domain by the creatures of the Wasteland, but he mentioned a
second invasion that won’t come from the Wasteland. It’s going to come from the
sea.’

‘That’s ridiculous, Dahlaine,’ Zelana scoffed. ‘Has the Vlagh allied itself with the
queen of the fish now?’

‘I’m just passing on what Ashad told me, Zelana. Where’s Veltan? We’d better go
tell him what’s afoot.’

‘He’s out in the bay on the Trogite ship of Commander Narasan,’ Red-Beard
replied. ‘Longbow can take you out there in his canoe, if you’d like. I’d do it myself,
but I’m just a little busy right now.’

‘Is there trouble of some kind?’
 ‘Sort of. The fire-mountains destroyed Lattash, so the tribe’s busy setting up a new
village out here. It might not be as pretty, but it’s safer.’

I looked at the partially-completed lodges near the beach. ‘Those don’t look at all
like the ones back in Lattash,’ I observed, ‘but they seem sort of familiar, for some
reason.’

‘They should,’ Longbow told me. ‘They’re copies of the lodges up in the north of
your Domain.’

‘It’s part of a fairly elaborate deception, big brother,’ Zelana said with a faint
smile. ‘The men of Chief Red-Beard’s tribe believe that growing food is “women’s
work”, and that it’s beneath them. The women needed help in preparing the ground
for planting, and Longbow’s chief, Old-Bear, told these two that some tribes in your
Domain live in a vast grassland where there aren’t any trees, and they build their
lodges out of sod instead of tree branches. The men of Red-Beard’s tribe built the
usual lodges out of tree limbs and then sat around loafing and telling each other war
stories. But one windy night these two slipped around pulling down the new lodges.
When the sun came up, they walked around with sombre faces telling the men of the
tribe that tree limbs weren’t sturdy enough for lodges out here, and that they were
going to need something more solid. They suggested sod, and the men of the tribe are