"Kerr, Katharine - Deverry 03 - Bristling Wood v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

by, slowly, on the ebb and swell of the seasons: the harsh rains of
winter, when the grass turned a bluish green and the gray sky hung
close to the earth; the spring floods, when the streams overflowed
their banks and pooled around the willows and hazels, pale green
with first leaves; the parching summer, when the grass lay pale
gold and all fires were treacherous; the first soft rains of fall, when
wildflowers bloomed briefly in purple and gold. Driving their herds
of horses and flocks of sheep, the People drifted north in the
summerТs heat and south in the winterТs cold, and as they rode,
they marked only the little things: the first stag to lose his antlers,
the last strawberries. Since the gods were always present,
traveling with their folk in the long wandering, they needed no high
holidays or special feasts in their honor. When two or three alarli,
the loosely organized traveling groups, happened to meet, then
there was a festival to celebrate the company of friends.

Yet there was one day of the year marked out from all the others:
the spring equinox, which usually signaled the start of the floods. In
the high mountains of the far north, the snows were melting,
sending a tide down through the grasslands, just as another tide,
this one of blood, had once swept over them from the north in the
far past. Even though individuals of their race lived some five
hundred years on the average, by now there were none left whoТd
been present in those dark years, but the People remembered.
They made sure that their children would always remember on the
day of the equinox, when the alarli gathered in groups of ten or
twelve for the Day of Commemoration.

Even though he was eager to ride east to Deverry, Ebaёy
Salomonderiel would never have left the elven lands until heТd
celebrated this most holy and terrifying of days. In the company of
his father, Devaberiel Silverhand the bard, he rode up from the
seacoast to the joining of the rivers Corapan and Delonderiel, near
the stretch of primeval forest that marked the border of the
grasslands. There, as theyТd expected, they found an alardan, or
clan. Scattered in the tall grass were two hundred painted tents,
red and purple and blue, while the flocks and herds grazed
peacefully a little distance away. A little apart from the rest stood
ten unpainted tents, crudely stitched together from poorly tanned
hides.

УBy the Dark Sun herself,Ф Devaberiel remarked. УIt looks like
some of the Forest Folk have come to join us.Ф

УGood. ItТs time they got over their fear of their own kind.Ф

Devaberiel nodded in agreement. He was an exceptionally
handsome man, with hair pale as moonlight, deep-set dark blue
eyes, slit vertically like a catТs, and gracefully long pointed ears.
Although Ebaёy had inherited the pale hair, in other ways he took