"David Eddings - Ellenium 1 - The Diamond Throne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

and of the rings which unlocked its power and he sent
forth his hordes out of Zemoch to seize the gems by force
of arms. The kings of the west took up arms to join with
the Knights of the Church to face the armies of Otha of
Zemoch and of his dark Styric God, Azash. And King
Sarak of Thalesia took ship with some few of his vassals
and sailed south from Emsat, leaving behind the royal
command that his earls were to follow when the mobilization
of all Thalesia was complete. As it happened,
however, King Sarak never reached the great battlefield
on the plains of Lamorkand, but fell instead to a Zemoch
spear in an unrecorded skirmish near the shores of Lake
Venne in Pelosia. A faithful vassal, though mortally
wounded, took up his fallen lord's crown and struggled
his way to the marshy eastern shore of the lake. There,
hard-pressed and dying, he cast the Thalesian crown into
the murky, peat-clouded waters of the lake, even as
Ghwerig, who had followed his lost treasure, watched in
horror from his place of concealment in a nearby peat
bog. The Zemochs who had slain King Sarak immediately

began to probe the brown-stained depths, that they
might find the crown and carry it in triumph to Azash,
but they were interrupted in their search by a column of
Alcione Knights sweeping down out of Deira to join the
battle in Lamorkand. The Alciones fell upon the
Zemochs and slew them to the last man. The faithful
vassal of the Thalesian king was given an honourable
burial, and the Alciones rode on, all unaware that the
fabled crown of Thalesia lay beneath the turbid waters of
Lake Venne.
It is sometimes rumoured in Pelosia, however, that on
moonless nights the shadowy form of the immortal
Troll-Dwarf haunts the marshy shore. Since, by reason of
his malformed limbs, Ghwerig dares not enter the dark
waters of the lake to probe its depths, he must creep
along the marge, alternately crying out his longing to
Bhelliom and dancing in howling frustration that it will
not respond to him.
!!!
PART ONE
Cimmura
*Chapter1

It was raining. A soft, silvery drizzle sifted down out of
the night sky and wreathed around the blocky watchtowers of the city of
Cimmura, hissing in the torches on each side of the broad gate and making
the stones of the road leading up to the city shiny and black. A lone rider
approached the city. He was wrapped in a dark, heavy traveller's cloak and
rode a tall, shaggy roan horse with a long nose and flat, vicious eyes. The