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

there were still two regions beyond the high hills that were not now and forever blocked off from us.
There was the land of the sunrise and the land of shorter summers. Many were the arguments between
those warrior servants who favored the land of shorter summers and those who favored the land of the
sunrise, and those arguments became more heated until those who preferred shorter summers and those
who favored sunrise began to kill each other.
And finally, to prevent more of the killing, beloved Mother chose shorter summers, and once she had
chosen, the killing stopped.

The seekers were much interested in a low-tree that flickered and put out light and dark clouds which lay
close to the ground or rose high up into the sky, for they saw that low-tree as a way to kill the man-things
from a long way off, and that would put none of the servants of our beloved Mother in peril.

And the seekers were much pleased when they discovered that the low-tree was most generous, and
freely it shared its flickers and clouds with other low-trees of its own kind.

Now other seekers had gone into the high hills that blocked off the land of shorter summers, and they
soon found a narrow pathway that went through the high hills and emerged in a well-concealed manner in
the land of shorter summers.

Cautious was our beloved Mother, however, and she sent forth servants that could make the noises of
the man-things to deceive the man-things and to set them at war one with the other, for it had come to the
overmind that the man-things on occasion hated each other even more than they hated us, and gladly
would they kill each other, and that would make things easier for Mother's warrior servants.

We proceeded across the flat place where there are no things-to-eat and came at last to the narrow
pathway that led from Mother's region to the land of shorter summers. Much were we discontented when
we arrived there, however, for the man-things had once more piled flat rocks on top of other flat rocks to
block our path.

We now had a means to drive them away, however. The seekers entered several nesting places in the
high hills below the flat rock-pile of the man-things, there to make piles of the low-trees that flicker inside
the nesting places, and dense black clouds passed over their rock-pile, and then the man-things turned
and fled, leaving the pathway open to the warrior servants.

Beloved Mother rejoiced and told the warrior servants to move rapidly along the narrow pathway
toward the land of shorter summers, for now the low-trees—which almost certainly loved Mother almost
as much as do we who serve and protect her—continued to drive the man-things away.

And so it was that the warrior servants swarmed up the narrow pathway with victory almost certainly
within their reach.

But then a man-thing that was not a breeder as most of the man-things are unleashed something that no
one has ever seen before. We, the servants of beloved Mother, have encountered the fires of the
man-things before, but the man-thing who was not a breeder sent a huge wave of fire that was not yellow
down the pathway. The fire was blue instead, and it consumed warrior servants uncounted as it rushed
on down the narrow path and even beyond.

That in itself was horrid beyond anything we had yet encountered, but then the man-thing which was not
a breeder called forth yet another blue fire at the foot of our narrow path. And that blue fire rose higher
than the pile of flat rocks the man-things had built, and it showed no indication that it would ever stop