"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 07 - The magic Engineer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"Well... it says that the women Angels fled and came to the Roof of the World. They founded
Westwind and the Guard and the western kingdoms ..." The pudgy girl looks at the polished
graystone floor tiles.
The magistra clears her throat. "You come from Recluce, not from Hamor or Nordla. You should
certainly know the Legend. We'll try ... Dorrin, what was unique about the Angels who fled to
earth-to our world, if you will?"
Dorrin licks his lips. "Unique? Well . . . they fled from Heaven, rather than fight a
meaningless war with the Demons of Light."
"That's spelled out in the Legend. But ..." She draws out the word. "What was supposedly unique
about those particular fallen Angels?"
Kadara lifts a hand.
"Yes, Kadara."
"Weren't they all women?"
"That is indeed what the Legend says. Why is that patently incorrect?"
"Incorrect?" stumbles the normally silent Arcol.
"Ah, yes . . . incorrect. Why?" repeats Lortren.
As the silence draws out, Dorrin answers. "Because they had children, I suppose, but..."
"You were going to say something else, Dorrin?"
"No, magistra."
"You were thinking something else."
"Yes," he admits, wishing he had not.
"And?"
Dorrin sighs. "According to the Legend, the Angels had weapons that could shatter suns and
whole worlds. Why couldn't they have had machines that allowed women to have children without
men?"
"Perhaps they did have such machines in Heaven, Dorrin . . . but ... if they had such machines,
where are they? Even more important, how did these powerful Angels, who had the supposed ability
to shatter worlds, end up in a simple stone hold on a mountaintop with no weapons beyond the
shortsword?"
"They renounced machines as the mark of chaos," asserts Arcol, the round face and pug nose
somehow incongruous with the dogged belief in the Legend.
"Ah, yes, the answer of the true believer."
Arcol flushes, but his chin squares. "Destruction is the mark of chaos, and the Angels fled to
avoid becoming the tools of chaos."
"Shall we consider that?" asks Lortren. Why bother? Even Dorrin knows that machines do not last
forever, and that anything built long centuries ago would have broken or been reused for the
metals or made into simpler artifacts-or even lost under the snows and ice of the Roof of the
World.
"What's the point of it all, magistra?" The voice is Brede's, the deep mellow tones more
appropriate to a graybeard than to a fresh-faced and muscular youth with hazel eyes. "I mean, some
women wrote down that they escaped from a bunch of crazy men. They built a kingdom on a mountain
top. They used their blades to chop up anyone who got in their way and claimed that the reason was
that men were all weak and silly."
L "Blasphemer..." mutters Arcol.
Kadara's mouth quirks as if she suppresses a grin.
Lortren does in fact grin, but the expression is more the look on the face of a hill cat who
has discovered a meal than a look of amusement. "Brede, you raise an interesting question. Do, by
chance, you happen to know the only country in Candar that had the same government and the same
power from its inception until its destruction at the hands of the White Wizards?"
"That has to be Westwind, or you wouldn't have asked the question."