"Tracy Falbe - The Rys Chronicles 03 - Judgment Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Falbe Tracy)

held their startled horses steady and looked fearfully up the slope. Ahead of them, dust blasted
around the bend in the road, but the perilous slide missed the riders and spared them a hard
painful death.

As the rattling of rocks and pebbles diminished, Dreibrand Veta cautiously urged his horse forward
to inspect the damage. He contemplated the unstable boulders and mounds of soil blocking the
ancient road. For over two thousand years, the road had been untraveled and clear, and when
Dreibrand considered that he had depended on the route for only five years, its sudden disrepair
annoyed him.

He looked at the twenty men behind him. They were already turning their horses around in
anticipation of a lot of backtracking. Dreibrand told them to find a stable spot where they could take
a break.

Tytido moved up beside Dreibrand and viewed the obliterated road. тАЬWe can go back and find the
lower trail that Chilo scouted last year. We can still reach Elendra before nightfall,тАЭ Tytido said,
trying to be positive even as his dark eyes watched the slope above them.

Dreibrand calculated the distance of the detour to the summer settlement named after his wifeтАЩs
late daughter and nodded in support of TytidoтАЩs estimation.

Noting his friendтАЩs disappointment, Tytido said, тАЬWe could have been under the slide instead of
inconvenienced by it.тАЭ

Dreibrand agreed. They were very lucky that the shifting effects of the spring thaw had collapsed
the slope before they reached it, even if the timing had been close.

тАЬMay our luck continue on the lower trail,тАЭ Dreibrand said as he eyed the dense deciduous forest
where they now had to venture.

A thick and intimidating forest filled the circular valley that bulged into the Tabren Mountains from
the prairie. The valley had once been the heartland of ancient Nufal, and next to the lake at its
center, rose the towering ruins of a city. Dreibrand and the settlers had not penetrated the forest
yet and explored the city.

Until five years ago, Nufal in its entirety had been perilous to human travel. Dreibrand had known of
the vacant land as only the Wilderness, and no one, human or rys, had lived there for over two
thousand years. The original civilization had been eradicated by the immensely powerful rys
monarchs, Onja and Dacian, who had lived in the neighboring Rysamand Mountains. Possessing
magical powers superior to their enemies, Onja and Dacian had destroyed the Nufalese army with a
mighty spell that seized the souls of the warriors and transformed them into enslaved wraiths.
Bound to the will of the rys monarchs, the wraiths had been forced to kill every living being in Nufal,
leaving the cities littered with corpses.

Onja had then disposed of Dacian and made herself the sole ruler of the rys and the human tribes
that lived west of the Rysamand. Her reign endured for twenty-two centuries until another powerful
rys, Shan, had defeated her after a bitter costly war. Dreibrand had served Shan as a general of
human warriors, and his loyal service to the new rys King had earned him title to the Wilderness.

Dreibrand planned to build a new civilization in Nufal and be the ruler of the kingdom that he