"Barbara Hambly - Darwath 5 - Icefalcons Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

Lord Ankres said, "But we have all been to those caves, my Lady Queen." He leaned forward, narrow
hands resting on his knees. "Lord Ingold himself has gone carefully over them and found nothing but
marks and scratches on the floor."
Hethya looked puzzled, biting her lip.
Rudy asked her, "Whereabouts are these caves? Down near the old road?"
She shook her head immediately. "No, those were the ones the people stayed in, where there was the
water. These were up higher, and farther on, I think. I'd know the place if I was to see it again."
Rudy looked down at Tir, sitting rapt at Minalde's feet. "Any of this sound familiar to you, Ace?"
The boy shook his head, eyes shining. "What kind of things?" he wanted to know. "Machines?"
For the past two winters he had been enthralled by the mazes of levers and pulleys, belts and steam
turbines, that Ingold was constructing in his laboratories in the heart of the Keep crypts next to the
hydroponics gardens that fed the population.
The few fragments of ancient machines that had been found provided only tantalizing scraps of
information, hints and clues and the tiniest seeds of speculation, which, the Icefalcon knew, drove ingold
and Gil insane.
The Icefalcon himself had little opinion of machines. They could not be made to work and took up a deal
of space, and, upon two or three occasions, trials of their virtues had resulted in nearly killing everyone in
the room.
Gil and Rudy had both attempted to explain to him why it was necessary that such machines as Gil saw in
the record crystals from the Times Before should be made to work again, but the Icefalcon still distrusted
them.
It was said among his people that it took a brave man to befriend a Wise Man, and after eleven years'
friendship with Ingold Inglorion, greatest of the wizards of the West, the Icefalcon had concluded that
one had to be slightly mad as well.
Hethya was still speaking, telling Tir and Rudy and the Lady Alde about machines that would draw water
from deep in the earth or generate heat and operate the pumps that circulated air and water through the
unseen black ducts and pipes of the Keep.
Though Maia was shaking his head in disapproval, she spoke of apparatus that would melt snow and
cause plants to fruit and put forth crops twice and sometimes thrice in a year-the sort of things the more
foolish of the people of the Real World west of the mountains attributed to their Ancestors, as if anyone's
Ancestors would be interested in such matters. The Talking Stars People had more sense.
"I know not whether these things will remain," Hethya said, the Felwoods brogue dissolving again, the
antique inflection returning as the pitch of the voice itself deepened and slowed.
"We hid them deep, for the world in those days was full of foolish men and the acts of a few evil wizards
had brought down the persecution of the Church on them all. A world of time has passed over them, and
time contains many things. We thought, me Uncle Linok and meself. . ."
She was all Felwoods again. "We thought to lay hold of some of these things, to buy ourselves at least a
place to dwell, now the eastern lands are all warfare and bandits and death."
Her nostrils flared a little, and the hazel eyes darkened again, and her fingers clenched the faded gilding of
her chair arm.
"You need not trouble yourselves about the purchase of refuge." Alde rose from her own chair and held
out her hand, her full garnet oversleeve falling straight.
Against Hethya's height and strength she had a fragile look, like the chair she had sat in, the delicate
workmanship of a world fast slipping away.
"Whatever you seek, be sure that you will have our help. Whatever you find, be sure that it will not be
taken from you so long as your use of it be honest. That I pledge you."
Hethya curtsied deep with her borrowed skirts and kissed the Lady's outstretched hand. Linok carefully
unwrapped himself from his many shawls and made his bow, an elaborate Court obeisance that once
again tripped something in the Icefalcon's mind.
But then, it was the sort of silliness that civilized people did, and he had lived among them for four years