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

fewer and fewer offspring, and the Vlagh had come face to face with the distinct
possibility of the extinction of its species.

When the burrowing insects had reached the mountains, they’d encountered solid
stone, and their progress had stopped at that point. Not long after that, however,
they’d discovered the caves lying beneath those mountains, and the species which
should have gone extinct lived on.



I’m of two minds about caves. I love mine, but I hate theirs.
 Anyway, the servants of the Vlagh had encountered other creatures in the caves
and mountains, and evidently the overmind had realized that some of those creatures
had characteristics which might prove to be very useful, and it had begun to
experiment - or tamper - producing peculiar and highly unnatural variations.

I rather ruefully conceded that the experiment which had produced what Sorgan
Hook-Beak of the Land of Maag colorfully called ‘the snake-men’ had been
extremely successful, though I can’t for the life of me understand exactly how the
Vlagh had produced a creature that was part bug, part reptile, and part warmblooded
mammal that closely resembled a human being.

Biological impossibilities irritate me to no end.

I will admit, though, that had it not been for the near genius of the Shaman One-
Who-Heals, the creatures of the Wasteland would probably have won the war in my
sister’s Domain.

Ashad made a peculiar little sound, and I got up from my chair and crossed in the
dim light of our cavern to the stone bench that served as his bed to make sure that he
was all right. He was nestled down under his fur robe with his eyes closed, though, so
I was sure that he wasn’t having any problems. Our discovery that our Dreamer-
children weren’t able to live on light alone had made us all a little jumpy. It wasn’t
the sort of thing we wanted to gamble with. Then we came face to face with the
question of breathing. Veltan’s ten eons on the face of the moon had been a clear
demonstration of the fact that we didn’t really need to breathe. Many of our pet
people were fishermen, though, and drowning happens quite often. Even though our
Dreamer-children were actually gods, their present condition strongly suggested that
they needed air to breathe and food to eat, and none of us was in the mood to take any
chances.

Ashad was still breathing in and out, though, so I went on back to my chair. I let
my mind drift back to Ashad’s first few hours here in my cave. If anybody with a
cruel mind would like to see a god in a state of pure panic, I think he missed his
chance. Panic had run rampant in my family that day. As soon as Ashad started
screaming at me, I went all to pieces. Eventually, though, I remembered a peculiarity
of the bears which share my Domain with deer, people and wild cows. She-bears give
birth to their cubs during their yearly hibernation cycle, and their cubs attend to the
business of nursing all on their own. Then I remembered that a she-bear called
Broken-Tooth customarily hibernated in a cave that was no more than a mile away.