"Brooks, Terry - Heritage 01 - The Scions of Shannara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

He saw again in his mind the frightening visions. He had best
find a way to make them listen, he thought. Because, as he was
fond of reminding himself, he knew something of visions, and
there was a truth to these mat even one such as he, one who had
foresworn the Druids and their magic, could recognize.

If the Shannara children failed to listen, these visions would
come to pass.

II

Far Ohmsford stood in the rear doorway of the Blue
Whisker Ale House and stared down the darkened tun-
nel of the narrow street that ran between the adjoining
buildings into the glimmer of Varfleet's lights. The Blue Whisker
was a ramshackle, sprawling old building with weathered board
walls and a wood shingle roof and looked for all the world as if
once it had been someone's barn. It had sleeping rooms upstairs
over the serving hall and storerooms in the back. It sat at the
base of a block of buildings that formed a somewhat lopsided U,
situated on a hill at the western edge of the city.

Par breathed deeply the night air, savoring its flavors. City
smells, smells of life, stews with meats and vegetables laced
with spice, sharp-flavored liquors and pungent ales, perfumes
that scented rooms and bodies, leather harness, iron from forges
still red with coals kept perpetually bright, the sweat of animals
and men in close quarters, the taste of stone and wood and dust,
mingling and mixing, each occasionally breaking freeЧthey
were all there. Down the alleyway, beyond the slat-boarded,
graffiti-marked backs of the shops and businesses, the hill
dropped away to where the central part of the city lay east. An
ugly, colorless gathering of buildings in daylight, a maze of
stone walls and streets, wooden siding and pitch-sealed roofs,
the city took on a different look at night. The buildings faded
into the darkness and the lights appeared, thousands of them,
stretching away as far as the eye could see like a swarm of
fireflies. They dotted the masked landscape, flickering in the
black, trailing lines of gold across the liquid skin of the Mer-
midon as it passed south. Varfleet was beautiful now, the scrub-
woman become a fairy queen, transformed as if by magic.

Par liked the idea of the city being magic. He liked the city

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The Scions of Shannam 7

in any case, liked its sprawl and its meld of people and things,
its rich mix of life. It was far different from his home of Shady