"II 02 - Flint the King - Mary Kirchoff & Douglas Niles 1.1a" - читать интересную книгу автора (3))

Uth-Matar, and Sturm Brightblade - had parted ways to
discover what they could of the rumors concerning the true
clerics, agreeing to meet again in exactly five years. Flint
had spent much of his time in the last few years adventuring
with his much younger friends or traveling to fairs to sell his
metalsmithing and woodcarvings. Truly he missed them,
now that they were gone. But the truth of the matter was, at
one hundred forty years, the middle-aged dwarf was just
plain tired. So, being reclusive by nature, he had stayed at
home and done little more than eat, drink, sleep, stoke the
fire, and whittle in the month since their departure.
Flint's stomach rumbled. Patting the noisy complainer, he
reluctantly eased his bulk from his overstuffed chair near
the fire, brushing wood shavings from his lap as he stood.
He pulled his woolly vest closer and looked about his home
for his leather boots.
The house was small by the measure of the human-sized
buildings up in the trees. But his home, built in the base of
an old, hollowed-out vallenwood, was quite large by dwar-
ven standards - opulent even, he reflected, with not a little
pride. Sure, it didn't have the large nooks and crannies
found in the caves-turned-houses of his native foothills near
the Kharolis Mountains, nor was there the ever-present
homey scent only a white-hot forge could produce. But he
had carved every inch of the inside of his tree into shelves or
friezes depicting vivid and nostalgic scenes from his home- '
land. These included a forging contest, dwarven miners at
work, and the simple skyline of his boyhood village. Such
carvings were not easily done on the stone walls of the
homes of most hill dwarves.
The stroke of his knife over a firm piece of wood was
Flint's greatest joy, though the gruff hill dwarf would never
have admitted such a sentiment. Idly, he raised his hand to
one of the friezes, touching his fingers to the carved crest of
a jagged ridge, following the dips and summits. He dropped
his hand to the carvings of the dark pine forests below the
crest, admiring the precise bladework that had marked each
tree in individual relief on the wall.
With a large, shuddering sigh, Flint took his heavy, well-

worn leather boots from under a bench by the door and
jammed them onto his thick feet. There was nothing to be
done about it - he'd put off this errand as long as he could.
The massive vallenwood front door creaked as Flint
opened it, causing the shutters on his windows to bang in
the chill breeze, their hinges sagging like an old woman's
stockings. They ought to be repaired - there were many
such tasks to be done before the first snow fell.
Flint's home was one of the few in Solace at ground level,