"Dan Parkinson. The Gates of Thorbardin ("DragonLance Saga Heroes II" #2) (angl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

some brass and ebony with which to make a handle for

it.
"You have skill at making weapons, Chane," Chiselcut
told him. "Maybe some ancestor of yours was a crafts-
man. It's too bad you don't have a known lineage. But
then, most orphans don't. Keep the dagger, and keep
learning. Having craft is more important than knowing
who you are."
For fifteen years Chane had carried and cherished the
knife, and sometimes at odd moments it seemed to whis-
per to him, "Look at me, Chane Feldstone. I am no ordi-
nary dagger, and you are no ordinary dwarf. See your
reflection in my steel. Perhaps someday your reflection
will tell you who you really are."
He had looked at his reflection and wondered. Even
then, in the years before his shoulders broadened and his
whiskers grew, he had been aware that he looked subtly
different from most of those around him... not quite
typical of the ordinary day-to-day Daewar he met in the
trade centers. In some respects, he even resembled the
Hylar dwarves - not that it made any difference, since
there was no more likelihood of his tracing lineage
among the Hylar than among the Daewar. A foundling is
a foundling, anywhere in Thorbardin.
It was in those years, too, that the dreams began. The
same insistent dream, over and over, sometimes no more
than a week apart. The mysterious place, the mysterious
container, and the old, horned battle helmet that he held
in his hands but somehow never managed to place upon
his head.
The years had passed, and he had come of age and
found work with Rogar Goldbuckle, the trader. He had
served as a packer and sometimes as an outsman, going
beyond Southgate to help with the gear and goods of
trading parties bound for Barter or some other gathering
place of merchants. Chane had made the journey to Bar-
ter himself once. He had met elves and humans, gnomes
and kender. He had seen the rising and setting of the sun,
had seen the moons in the night sky, had felt the vastness
of outside, a world not contained beneath mountains.
Back in Thorbardin, full of worldliness and wonder,

Chane had walked as tall as any dwarf for the first time
in his life. And it had been then that he'd met Jilian. Jilian
Firestoke. His eyes grew moist now, remembering how
she had made his heart melt... and how he had worked
to win her affections. He had known from the first that
her father despised him, but that hadn't seemed impor-
tant. Jilian knew her own mind, and what Slag Firestoke