"Margaret Weis - Dragonlance Chronicles 01 - Dragons Of Autumn Twilight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

the road.
The Inn was so crowded on this night that the three were continually forced to
stand aside on the stairs to let men, women, and children pass them. Tanis
noticed that people glanced at him and his companions with suspicion-not with
the welcoming looks they would have given five years ago.
Tanis's face grew grim. This was not the homecoming he had dreamed about. Never
in the fifty years he had lived in Solace had he felt such tension. The rumors
he had heard about the malignant corruption of the Seekers must be true.
Five years ago, the men calling themselves "seekers" ("we seek the new gods")
had been a loose-knit organization of clerics practicing their new religion in
the towns of Haven, Solace, and Gateway. These clerics had been misguided, Tanis
believed, but at least they had been honest and sincere. In the intervening
years, however, the clerics had gained more and more status as their religion
flourished. Soon they became concerned not so much with glory in the afterlife
as with power on Krynn. They took over the governing of the towns with the
people's blessing.
A touch on Tanis's arm interrupted his thoughts. He turned and saw Flint
silently pointing below. Looking down, Tanis saw guards marching past, walking
in parties of four. Armed to the teeth, they strutted with an air of
self-importance.
"At least they're human-not goblin," Tas said.
"That goblin sneered when I mentioned the High Theocrat," Tanis mused. "As if
they were working for someone else. I wonder what's going on."
"Maybe our friends will know," Flint said.
"If they're here," Tasslehoff added. "A lot could have happened in five years."
"They'll be here-if they're alive," Flint added in an undertone. "It was a
sacred oath we took-to meet again after five years had passed and report what we
had found out about the evil spreading in the world. To think we should come
home and find evil on our very doorsteps!"
"Hush! Shss!" Several passersby looked so alarmed at the dwarfs words that Tanis
shook his head.
"Better not talk about it here," the half-elf advised.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Tas flung the door open wide.
A wave of light, noise, heat, and the familiar smell of Otik's spicy potatoes
hit them full in the face. It engulfed them and washed over them soothingly.
Otik, standing behind the bar as they always remembered him, hadn't changed,
except maybe to grow stouter. The Inn didn't appear to have changed either,
except to grow more comfortable.
Tasslehoff, his quick kender eyes sweeping the crowd, gave a yell and pointed
across the room. Something else hadn't changed either-the firelight gleaming on
a brightly polished, winged dragon helm.
"Who is it?" asked Flint, straining to see.
"Caramon," Tanis replied.
"Then Raistlin'll be here, too," Flint said without a great deal of warmth in
his voice.
Tasslehoff was already sliding through the muttering knots of people, his small,
lithe body barely noticed by those he passed. Tanis hoped fervently the kender
wasn't "acquiring" any objects from the Inn's customers. Not that he stole
things- Tasslehoff would have been deeply hurt if anyone had accused him of
theft. But the kender had an insatiable curiosity, and various interesting items