"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dragon Weather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

really what we’ll have.”
Arlian looked straight up at the sky overhead. It
wasn’t dark as night, but it wasn’t very bright,
either; the summer haze was thick and foul with the
gasses from the smoking peak of the mountain. The
fumes had been thicker than usual lately, but
whether that had any connection with the weather
no one seemed to know. Arlian had heard the adults
arguing about it, but the arguments were never
settled.
“Why is it called dragon weather, Grandsir?” he
asked.
“Because it’s the sort of weather that brings the
dragons out of their caves,” his grandfather replied.
“They can’t abide cold or light, Ari. In the days
when the dragons ruled over our ancestors the
world was warmer than it is now, and the great
beasts darkened the skies with their smoke so that
they could come out by day, as well as night. When
the weather’s dark and hot now, old and tired as
they are, they still stir in their sleep, and sometimes
they awaken and come out to feed.”
Arlian stared nervously at his grandfather. The
old man spoke in a deeper voice than usual—his
storytelling voice. It made his words seem more
important, and more ominous.
“Don’t mind him, Ari,” Arlian’s mother said,
patting Arlian’s shoulder reassuringly. “That’s just
stories. No one’s seen any dragons in hundreds of
years.”
Her father shook his head.
“No, Sharbeth, you’re wrong,” he said. “When I
was a boy I saw a village where a dragon had been
not long before. I may be old, but it wasn’t
hundreds of years ago.”
“Tell me about it!” Arlian said.
His grandfather smiled down at him. “Are you
sure? They say it’s bad luck to talk about the
dragons, just as it’s unlucky to speak too much
about magic.”
Arlian nodded. “Tell me about it, Grandsir!”
Grandsir looked up at the sky and frowned, then
back down at Arlian, his smile reappearing. “I was a
year or two older than you are, and my uncle Stirian
had taken me on a trading journey down to
Benth-in-Tara, to meet a caravan that was passing
through,” he said. “We saw the ruins on the way.
We’d had a hot summer the year before, weather
something like this, and for a few days the smoke
from the mountain had been much thicker than