"Brooks - Heritage 2 -The Druid of Shannara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

he King of the Silver River stood at the edge of the
Gardens that had been his domain since the dawn of
' the age of faerie and iooked out over the world of
mortal men. What he saw left him sad and discouraged. Every-
where the land sickened and died, rich black earth turning to
dust, grassy plains withering, forests becoming huge stands of
deadwood, and lakes and rivers either stagnating or drying away.
Everywhere the creatures who lived upon the land sickened and
died as well, unable to sustain themselves as the nourishment
they relied upon grew poisoned. Even the air had begun to turn
foul.

And all the while, the King of the Silver River thought, the
Shadowen grow stronger.

His fingers reached out to brush the crimson petals of the
cyclamen that grew thick about his feet. Forsythia clustered just
beyond, dogwood and cherry farther back, fuchsia and hibiscus,
rhododendrons and dahlias, beds of iris, azaleas, daffodils,
roses, and a hundred other varieties of flowers and flowering
plants that were always in bloom, a profusion of colors that
stretched away into the distance until lost from sight. There were
animals to be seen as well, both large and small, creatures whose
evolution could be traced back to that distant time when all
f-ings lived in harmony and psace.

In me present world, the world of the Four Lands and the
Races that had evolved out of the chaos and destruction of the
Great Wars, that time was all but forgotten. The King of
the Silver River was its sole remnant. He had been alive when
the world was new and its firsi creatures were just being born.
He had been young then, and tilers had been many like him.
Now he was old and he was the lasi of his kind. Everything that

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2 The Druid of Shannara

had been, save for the Gardens in which he lived, had passed
away. The Gardens alone survived, changeless, sustained by the
magic of faerie. The Word had given the Gardens to the King
of the Silver River and told him to tend them, to keep them as a
reminder of what had once been and what might one day be
again. The world without would evolve as it must, but the Gar-
dens would remain forever the same.

Even so, they were shrinking. It was not so much physical as