"David Eddings - The Dreamers 04 - The Younger Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

There was one thing that was abundantly clear, however. Not only could "unknown friend" erase
memories, she could also break—or just ignore—some very important rules. Zelana and her family were
not permitted to kill things. "Unknown friend," however, had manipulated the members of the Trogite
Church with her "sea of gold" and lured them into a confrontation with the Creatures of the Wasteland.
Then, when the two enemy forces were locked in what would almost certainly have turned out to be a
war of mutual extinction, "unknown friend" had obliterated them all with an enormous wall of water that
she'd pulled up from about six miles down below the face of the earth.

It seemed that their friend had powers that Zelana could not even imagine, although she was almost
positive that their friend was using the Dreamers to assist her.

The more Zelana thought about it, the more certain she became that Eleria's flood and Yaltar's twin
volcanos had also originated in the mind and imagination of "unknown friend."

The involvement of the Dreamers had been confirmed when the children's shared vision had mentioned "a
fire unlike any fire we have ever seen," which had produced the blue inferno that had obliterated what
had almost certainly been an entire hatch of the Vlagh.

That, of course, brought Aracia's idiotic attempt to conceal Lillabeth's Dream right out into the open.
Aracia had always been obsessed with her own divinity, but now—probably because of the overdone
adoration of those assorted indolents who had identified themselves as her clergy—Aracia's mind had
begun to slip, and she seemed to be convinced that she was now the most important creature in the entire
universe. Her absurd attempt to conceal Lillabeth's Dream had been a clear indication that sister Aracia's
mind was starting to come apart.

The more that Zelana thought about it, though, the more she remembered that Aracia had always been
more than a little unwilling to go to sleep and relinquish her Domain to Enalla. It seemed that deep down,
Zelana's sister hated Enalla. The length of their sleep-cycle made change inevitable. Zelana ruefully
recalled the time in the distant past when she'd awakened to find her Domain covered with ice that must
have been at least two miles deep. It had taken Dahlaine weeks to explain that to Zelana's satisfaction.
He'd assured her that the inevitable thaw had already begun, but it had been almost five centuries before
the ice was gone, and Zelana's Domain didn't look at all the way it had when she'd drifted off to sleep.
Perhaps even more disturbing had been the fact that the creatures she'd come to know in her previous
cycle were all gone, and strange new animals had arrived to replace them. Dahlaine had used the term
"extinction," and that had chilled Zelana all the way down to her bones. She'd had almost no contact with
Aracia during that particular cycle, but she was almost positive that her sister had somehow twisted things
around in her mind so that she could blame Enalla for those eons of ice and the disappearance of almost
all of the creatures that had been present in her Domain when she'd gone to sleep.

Something like that was the sort of thing Aracia would do.

Zelana was growing more and more weary now, and she'd be more than willing to hand the
responsibilities of the Domain of the West to Balacenia—the adult version of Eleria—but she was almost
positive that Aracia wouldn't see things that way at all, and her priesthood was probably in a state of
near-panic by now. Whether they liked it or not, Aracia would go to sleep very soon, and Enalla would
replace her. Zelana had caught a few hints from Eleria that Enalla—the real version of Lillabeth—had
some plans that Aracia's priests wouldn't like very much at all.

"It might almost be worth staying awake long enough to watch," she murmured to herself. "Almost," she