"Books - David Eddings - Belgarath the Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

"I couldn't even begin to describe it, Belgarath," he replied with a
look of wonder on his ugly face.

"You should try it. I wouldn't recommend jumping out of any windows,
though. Sometimes you're a little careless with details, and if you
don't get the tail feathers right, you'll break your beak."

Beldin's discovery came at a fortuitous time. It wasn't very long
afterward that our Master sent us out from the Vale to see what the
rest of mankind had been up to. As closely as I can pinpoint it, it
seems to have been about fifteen hundred years since that snowy night
when I first met him.

Anyway, flying is a much faster way to travel than walking. Beldin
coached us all, and we were soon flapping around the Vale like a flock
of migrating ducks. I'll admit right at the outset that I don't fly
very well.

Polgara's made an issue of that from time to time. I think she holds
it in reserve for occasions when she doesn't have anything else to carp
about.

Anyway, after Beldin taught us how to fly, we scattered to the winds
and went out to see what people were up to. With the exception of the
Ulgos, there wasn't really anybody to the west of us, and I didn't get
along too well with their new Gorim. The original one and I had been
close friends, but the latest one seemed just a bit taken with
himself.

So I flew east instead and dropped in on the Tolnedrans. They had
built a number of cities since the last time I had seen them. Some of
those cities were actually quite large, though their habit of using
logs for constructing walls and thatch for roofs made me just a little
wary of entering those free-standing firetraps. As you might expect,
the Tolnedran fascination with money hadn't diminished in the fifteen
hundred years since I'd last seen them. If anything, they'd grown even
more acquisitive, and they seemed to spend a great deal of time
building roads. What is this thing with Tolnedrans and roads? They
were generally peaceful, however, since war's bad for business, so I
flew on to visit the Marags.

The Marags were a strange people--as I'm sure our friend Reig has
discovered by now. Perhaps their peculiarities are the result of the
fact that there are many more women in their society than there are
men.

Their God, Mara, takes what is in my view an unwholesome interest in
fertility and reproduction. Their society is matriarchal, which is
unusual-although the Nyissans tend in that direction as well.