"Elenium 01 - The Diamond Throne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

Eddings, David - Elenium 1 - The Diamond Throne.txt
The Diamond Throne
David Eddings
Ellenium
book 1
Sparhawk, Pandion Knight, and Queen's Champion have returned to Elenia
after ten years of exile, only to find young Queen Ehlanda trapped in
a block of ensorcelled crystal. As Sparhawk sets out to find a cure
for Ehlana, he discovers that only he can defeat the evil plots that
threaten her rule.....
Prologue
Ghwerig and the Bhelliom - From the Legends of the Troll-Gods
At the dawn of time, long before the ancestors of
Styricum slouched, fur-clad and club-wielding, out of
the mountains and forests of Zemoch onto the plains of
central Eosia, there dwelt in a deep cavern lying beneath
the perpetual snows of northern Thalesia a dwarfed and
misshapen Troll named Ghwerig. Now, Ghwerig was
an outcast by reason of his ugliness and his overwhelming
greed, and he laboured alone in the depths of
the earth, seeking gold and precious gems that he might
add to the treasure-hoard which he jealously guarded.
Finally there came a day when he broke into a deep
gallery far beneath the frozen surface of the earth and
beheld by the light of his flickering torch a deep blue
gemstone, larger than his fist, embedded in the wall.
Trembling with excitement in all his gnarled and twisted
limbs, he squatted on the floor of that passage and
gazed with longing at the huge jewel, knowing that its
value exceeded that of the entire hoard which he had
laboured for centuries to acquire. Then he began with
great care to cut away the surrounding stone, chip by
chip, so that he might lift the precious gem from the
spot where it had rested since the world began. And as
more and more it emerged from the rock, he perceived
that it had a peculiar shape, and an idea came to him.
Could he but remove it intact, he might by careful
carving and polishing enhance that shape and thus
increase the value of the gem a thousand-fold.
When at last he gently took the jewel from its rocky
bed, he carried it straightaway to the cave wherein lay his
workshop and his treasure-hoard. Indifferently, he
shattered a diamond of incalculable worth and fashioned
from its fragments tools with which he might carve and
shape the gem which he had found.
For decades, by the light of smoky torches, Ghwerig
patiently carved and polished, muttering all the while
the spells and incantations which would infuse this
priceless gem with all the power for good or ill of the
Troll-Gods. When at last the carving was done, the gem