"David and Leigh Eddings - [Dreamers 04] - The Younger Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

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 added, "but not quite." As closely as she could
determine, "sleep-time" was no more than a few months away. She'd long since
decided that the pink grotto on the Isle of Thurn would be the place where she'd
sleep this time. The pink dolphins would sing her to sleep, and she might even
have dreams of her own this time—dreams of a Land of Dhrall without a Vlagh, and
a land where her friends did not grow old and pass away, and where she could
sing and write poetry, and where it was always spring and the flowers never
wilted. Now that might be the best of dreams.


"I thought I could feel your presence here, dear sister," Dahlaine said as he
joined Zelana on the balcony over the "lumpy map" of his Domain. "You seem to be
troubled. What's bothering you so much?"
"Aracia, of course," Zelana replied. "I think her mind is slipping even more
than it was when she tried to conceal Lillabeth's Dream. I wish that there was
some way that we could put her to sleep a few months early this time. Then we
could all concentrate on the Vlagh and stop worrying about our sister."
"It probably would make things a lot easier."
"What is it about Aracia that makes her start to go to pieces at the end of
every cycle?" Zelana demanded. "I was thinking back, and as closely as I can
remember, Aracia's never once gone off to sleep without fighting it every step
of the way. Why does she do that?"
Dahlaine shrugged. "Inferiority, most likely. When you include our alternates,
there are eight of us altogether, and as closely as I've been able to determine,