"Julian May - Boreal Moon 01 - Conqueror's Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

The emperor’s heavily armed, disciplined forces drove the sluggish Salka monsters beyond the central mountain ranges and the Green Men into the Elderwold. The Small Lights
were only a minor threat to humankind and learned the virtue of staying inconspicuous, while the mighty Beaconfolk unaccountably gave no resistance at all to the invasion. Perhaps
they were in the mood for fresh amusements!

Bazekoy named the fertile southern part of the island Blencathra (“moon garden”), and it soon attracted hordes of farmers, herders, and hunters from the teeming mainland. The
discovery of iron ore in the west and rich copper deposits along the River Liat led Bazekoy to establish mining and smelting operations, and even facilities for manufacturing
weapons and armor to further his continental conquests. By the time of the emperor’s death in Chronicle Year 62, Blencathra was a thriving province, exporting not only metals but
also grain and many other kinds of valued goods to Foraile, Stippen, and Andradh, and even to other nations more distant.

After Bazekoy’s incompetent successors allowed his empire to disintegrate, Cathra became an independent kingdom—although still attractive to continuing waves of immigrants
from the politically turbulent Continent. Over the next thousand years the entire island was gradually taken over by humankind and most of the surviving Salka forced into the fens or
the dreary Dawntide Isles far to the east.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20document...aar/Julian%20May%20-%20Boreal%20Moon%2001%20-%20Conqueror's%20Moon.html (10 of 243)20-2-2006 21:47:26
Julian, May - Boreal Moon 01 - Conqueror's Moon


Geography divides Blenholme naturally into four realms; but Cathra, south of the dividing range, has always remained the richest, most populous, and most fortunate.

The second kingdom to be established was Blendidion (“moon forest”) in the north-central part of the island, more austere of clime and having soil mostly thin and poor. It was
settled in the mid-500s by rude barbarian adventurers from Stippen, who subdued the scattered Cathran settlements, then married into them. The vigorous newcomers exploited
Didion’s vast woodlands and established their fortunes through forestry products and shipbuilding. The land also possessed valuable furs and deposits of tin, which it exported to
Cathra as well as to the Continent. In time, it became a prosperous, loosely knit nation of quarreling dukedoms and isolated robber-baronies owing reluctant fealty to the Didionite
monarch at Holt Mallburn.

The windswept northwestern peninsula of the island was explored late in the Seventh Century by marine marauders of Andradh who called themselves Wave-Harriers. They
discovered gold nuggets and valuable opals along the pebbled shore of Goodfortune Bay, settled the area, and defended it successfully against the navies of Cathra and Didion, which
lacked the Harriers’ fighting prowess at sea. Later, the Andradhian incomers discovered the sources of the gold—enormous living volcanos whose effusions warmed certain rivers
and created temperate valleys in what was otherwise an arctic wilderness. Sulphur deposits from the geyserlands and saltpetre exuding from rocks in the White Rime Mountains
inspired an anonymous alchymist to invent tarnblaze. That eerie weapon, immune to magical defenses, ensured that the upstarts now calling themselves the Sealords of Blentarn
(“moon pool”) and their descendants would keep their bleak but wealthy homeland safe against all attackers.

The fourth island kingdom, tiny Moss in the chill northeastern marshes, was born almost by chance in Chronicle Year 1022. Originally a precarious outpost of Didionite sealhunters,
fishermen, and amber-traders, the fortified castle of Fenguard came under the control of a mighty sorcerer named Rothbannon Bajor. He had acquired Seven Stones from the Salka,
sigils carved from moonstone capable of high sorcery that drew their power from the Beaconfolk. This man’s demands for tribute from the locals, enforced by hideous atrocities,
energized the Didionite authorities, who condemned Rothbannon to death in absentia and sent a warship to carry out the sentence.

Warned of his impending fate by friendly Salka shamans, Rothbannon invoked the dreaded Beaconfolk and used one of the Seven Stones to whistle up a gale that drove the man o‘
war onto the Darkling Sands, where all but a handful of the expedition perished. The self-styled Conjure-King of Blenmoss (“moon swamp”) then demonstrated other of his
formidable powers to the awestricken survivors of the shipwreck and afterwards sent them home to Holt Mallburn in a leaky fishing smack, carrying a list of non-negotiable demands.

The King of Didion paid substantial tribute to the terrible Conjure-King for decades; but when Rothbannon died, his successors proved much less adroit in the art of extortion, since
they were afraid of the perilous Seven Stones and the Beaconfolk who empowered them. Didion stopped paying tribute, but decided that reconquering Moss was more trouble than
the place was worth. After all, the Mossbacks would have to sell their sealskins and amber to someone—and the traders of Didion were always ready to do business.

The four kingdoms of High Blenholme on occasion squabbled viciously but never went to war—until 1128, when my tale begins. I was at that time sixteen years of age, and had
served Prince Heritor Conrig as a fledgling snudge and secret talent for four of them. We were more than master and man, for I alone knew what it was that set the prince apart from
ordinary mortals.

Or so I believed.