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

bay, where the cliff base lay in shelter thanks to a beak of rock that hooked into the half-moon, echoing
exactly the hook of a raptor's beak, the Kaled'a'in had built docks for the tiny fishing fleet now working
the coastline. One year of terrible travail to cross the country to get here, and nine of building. We
have managed a great deal, more than I would have thought, given that we cannot rely on magic
the way we used to.
Now his sigh was not one of exasperation, but of relative content.
From here the half-finished state of most of the city was not visible to the unaided eye. Things were
certainly better than they had been, even a few years ago, when many of the Kaled'a'in were still living at
the top of the cliff, in tents and shelters contrived from the floating barges.
The original plan had called for a city built atop the cliff, not perched like a puffin on the cliff face
itself. General Judeth was the one who had insisted on creating a new city built on terraces carved out of
the cliff face. Like so many of the Kaled'a'in and adopted Kaled'a'in, she was determined to have a home
that could never be taken by siege. Unlike many of them, she had a plan for such a place the moment she
saw the cliffs of the western coastline.
Skan still marveled at her audacity, the stubborn will that saw her plan through, and the persuasion
that had convinced them all she was right and her plan would work. Small wonder she had been a
commander of one of Urtho's Companies.
The rock here was soft enough to carve, yet hard enough to support a series of terraces, even in the
face of floods, winds, and waves. That was what Judeth, the daughter of a stonemason, had been the first
to see. The cliffs themselves had dictated the form the city took, but once folk began to notice that there
was a certain resemblance to a stylized gryphon with outstretched wings—well, some took it as an omen,
and some as coincidence, but there was never any argument as to what the new city would be called.
White Gryphon—in honor of Skandranon Rashkae, who no longer dyed his feathers black, and
thanks to the interval he had spent caught between two Gates, was now as pale as a white gyrfalcon. The
only black left to him was a series of back markings among the white feathers, exactly like the black bars
sometimes seen on the gyrfalcons of the north.
The White Gryphon regarded the city named for him with decidedly mixed feelings. Skandranon
was still more than a little embarrassed about it. After all those years of playing at being the hero, it was
somewhat disconcerting to have everyone, from child to ancient, revere him as one! And it was even
more disconcerting to find himself the tacit leader of all of the nonhumans of the Kaled'a'in, and deferred
to by many of the humans as well!
I thought I wanted to be a leader. Silly me.
Truth to be told, what he'd wanted to be was not a peacetime leader; he'd wanted to be the kind of
leader who made split-second decisions and clever, daring plans, not the kind of leader who oversaw
disputes between hertasi and kyree, or who approved the placement of the purifying tanks for the city
sewage system....
Council meetings bored him to yawning, and why anyone would think that heroism conferred instant
expertise in everything baffled him.
He wasn't very good at administration, but no one seemed to have figured that out yet.
Fortunately, I have good advisors who permit me to pirate their words and advice
shamelessly. And I know when to keep my beak shut and look wise.
Somehow both the refugees and the city a-building had survived his leadership and his decisions.
Most people had real homes now, homes built from the limestone that partly accounted for the city's pale
gleam under the full light of the sun. All of the terraces were cut and walled in with more of that limestone,
and all of the streets paved with crushed oyster shells, which further caught and reflected the light. There
was room for expansion for the next five or six generations—
And by the time there is no more space left on the terraces, it will be someone else's problem,
anyway.
Sculpting the terraces and putting in water and other services had been the work of a single
six-month period during which magic did work the way it was supposed to. It had been just as easy at