"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 02 - The White Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

The White Gryphon
Mage Wars 02
by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon



version 2.0 compared to original, spell checked, completed February 1, 2004




Lovingly dedicated to our parents,

Edward and Joyce Ritche

&

Jim and Shirley Dixon




One
Light.
From crown to talons, tailtip to wingtip, it will be a sculpture of light.
Skandranon Rashkae rested his beaked head atop his crossed foreclaws and contemplated the city
across the bay. Although his city was considered dazzling at night by the most jaded of observers, even
by day, White Gryphon was a city of light. It gleamed against the dense green foliage of the cliff face it
had been carved from, shining in the sun with all the stark white beauty of a snow sculpture. Not that this
coast had ever seen snow; they were too far west and south of their old home for that.
Of course, given the way that mage-storms have mucked up everything else, that could
change at a moment's notice, too.
Well, even if such a bizarre change in climate should occur, the Kaled'a'in of White Gryphon were
prepared for it. We build our city to endure, as Urtho built his Tower. Let the most terrible winter
storms rage, we are ready for them.
It would take another Cataclysm, and the kind of power that destroyed the twin strongholds of two
of the most powerful mages who ever lived, to flatten White Gryphon. And even then the ruins of its
buildings would endure, for a while at least, until the vegetation that covered these seaside cliffs finally
reclaimed the terraces and the remains of the buildings there...
Skan shook his head at his own musings. Now why are you thinking such gloomy thoughts of
destruction, silly gryphon? he chided himself. Haven't you got enough to worry about, that you
have to manufacture a second Ma'ar out of your imagination? You came over here to rest,
remember?
Oh, yes. Rest. He hadn't been doing a lot of that; it seemed as if every moment of every day was
taken up with solving someone else's problems—or at least look as if he was trying to solve their
problems.
There was no one near him to hear his sigh of exasperation, audible over the steady thunder of the
surf so far below him.
He dropped his eyes to the half-moon bay below his current perch, and to the waves that rolled
serenely and inexorably in to pound the base of the rocky cliffs beneath him. On the opposite side of the