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

Still caught up in sheer panic, I grabbed up my howling Dreamer and ran to Mama
Broken-Tooth’s cave. She’d already given birth to the cub Long-Claw, and he was
contentedly nursing when I entered the cave. Fortunately, I didn’t have to argue with
him. He was nice enough to move aside just a bit, and I introduced Ashad to bear’s
milk.

His crying stopped immediately.

Peculiarly - or maybe not - Ashad and Long-Claw were absolutely positive that
they were brothers, and after they’d both nursed their fill of Mama Broken-Tooth’s
milk, they began to play with each other.
 I remained in the cave until Mama Broken-Tooth awakened. She sniffed briefly at
her two cubs - totally ignoring the fact that one of them didn’t look at all like a bear -
and then she gently nestled them against her bearish bosom as if there was nothing at
all peculiar taking place. Of course, bears don’t really see very well, so they rely
instead on their sense of smell and after two weeks of rolling around on the dirt floor
of the cave, Ashad had most definitely had a bearish fragrance about him.

Ashad slept until almost noon, but my flaxen-haired little boy still seemed
exhausted when he rose, pulled on his tan leather smock and joined me at our table.
‘Good morning, uncle,’ he greeted me as he sank wearily into his chair. Almost
absently, he pulled the large bowl full of red berries he’d brought home the previous
evening in front of him and began to eat them one at a time. His appetite didn’t seem
quite normal, for some reason.

‘Is something bothering you, Ashad?’ I asked him.

‘I had a nightmare last night, uncle,’ the boy replied, absently fondling a shiny
black stone that was about twice the size of an eagle’s egg. ‘It seemed that I was
standing on nothing but air, and I was way up in the sky looking down at the Domain
of Vash. The country down there in the South doesn’t look at all like our country up
here, does it?’

There it was again. Ashad obviously knew Yaltar’s true name, even as Eleria did.
‘The people of the South are farmers, Ashad,’ I explained. ‘They grow much of their
food in the ground instead of concentrating on hunting the way our people do. They
had to cut down the trees to give themselves open ground for planting, so the land
down there doesn’t look at all like the land up here. What else happened in your
dream?’

Ashad pushed his yellow hair out of his eyes. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it seemed that
there were a whole lot of those nasty things coming into the Domain of Vash - sort of
like the things that crawled down into Balacenia’s Domain a little while ago.’ The
boy put the shiny black stone down on the table and ate more of the red berries.

There it was again. It was obvious now that the Dreamers were, perhaps
unconsciously, stepping over the barrier I’d so carefully set up between them and
their past.