"Roger Taylor - Hawklan 2 - Fall Of Fyorlund" - читать интересную книгу автора (Taylor Roger)

friendly calls with a wave. For a few minutes she stood and watched as the moonlight moved across a
small carving on the edge of the balcony. The shadows within it made it look like a bud slowly opening
into flower. So realistic did it seem that she had an urge to lean forward and sniff its night scent.

‘Oh! Too much dancing, girl,’ she said to herself, catching the strange thought and, spinning on her heel,
she went back inside, continuing her dance across to the bed.

She lay very still for a long time, allowing warm, tired limbs to sink into the bed’s sustaining softness as
she watched the moonlight’s slow march across the room.

Normally she would fall asleep immediately, but the dancing and the pleasant, strange familiarity of the
room left her drifting gently in and out of sleep. Each time she opened her eyes, the shadow patterns on
the ceiling had changed as the moon continued its journey through the sky. Not for the first time, she
wondered why the Orthlundyn were not content simply to make beautiful carvings, but had to fill every
carving and every cranny in the village with endlessly shifting shapes in which different scenes appeared
with each change of moonlight or sunlight. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed by the massive history that
seemed to be wrapped hidden in these carvings, even though it never made a coherent whole. She often
felt an ancestral presence reaching far behind her into a strange distant past.

Drifting back into consciousness, with half-opened eyes and a half-closed mind, she noted the shadow
of a man’s profile on the wall. It was vaguely familiar, but she could not identify it, and it was already
looping in and out of her incipient dreams.

When she opened her eyes again, it was gone.

Instead there was a darker, much more solid shadow there, not lightened by reflected moonlight but
cutting it out. It was the figure of a man, standing in the room.

Suddenly she was awake, eyes wide, at first in bewilderment and then in mounting terror as a powerful
hand was clamped over her mouth, and a soft hissing voice exhorted silence.

Chapter 2

In contrast to his leisurely journey from Pedhavin, Hawklan strode away from the Gretmearc as
vigorously as he dared without making his progress seem too conspicuous. His long legs carried him
easily through the throngs crowding the roads near that bustling, hectic market, but he was troubled and,
while he tried to use the steady rhythm of his walking to quieten his thoughts, it was of little avail.
 He had journeyed to the Gretmearc seeking answers to a question he had scarcely formulated. Now he
came away beset by countless questions that were all too clear. He was a healer, not a warrior and yet,
almost effortlessly, he had overcome four of the men who had attacked Andawyr’s tent. Then he found
himself angry because he had fled, despite his flight being at Andawyr’s express command. Fleeing –
leaving others to do his fighting. He felt degraded, dishonoured in some way that he could not
understand.

Where had these strange fighting skills come from, and from where this feeling of disloyalty at his
desertion of the field? And, perhaps even worse, from where the deeper voice within, coldly telling him
that this desertion was necessary for a greater good?

Then there was Andawyr himself. The strange little man who had undoubtedly saved his life. Andawyr
who had referred to him as Ethriss. ‘First among the Guardians,’ he had said. Some strange god-like