"Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody 5 - Elegy for a Lost Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haydon Elizabeth)

guarded mail caravans, but refusing to wait to travel with them in the
safety of numbers. In addition to his natural tendency of isolation, his
complete disdain for the majority of the human race, and his desire not to
be slowed down in his return by traveling with others, Achmed needed
time alone to think.
The heat of summer's end was waning as he traveled the trans-Orlandan
thoroughfare, the roadway built during the most prosperous days of the
previous empire. The thoroughfare bisected the land of Roland from the
sea-coast to the edge of the Manteids, the mountains known as the Teeth,
where he now reigned. The cooling of the season and the fresh wind that
came with it gave him a clear head, allowing him to sort through all he had
experienced.
The western seacoast he had left behind him was burning still, though
the fires had begun to be extinguished by the time he left. The ash from
the blackened forests had traveled east on the wind as well, and so for the
first few days of his journey his nostrils and sensitive sinuses were sore
from their exposure to the soot. But by the time he reached the province
of Bethany, -the midpoint of the realm of Roland, the wind had turned
clearer, and so had his head.
His mind, distracted by the disappearance of one of his two friends in
the world, was able to refocus on what had been his priority for the last
few months. Now that she was safe, his thoughts were locked obsessively
on the completion of his tower.
 Many of the reasons for his obsession with rebuilding the
instrumentality that had once been housed in the mountain peak of Gurgus
were lodged in the past. But the most important one was the future.
The pounding of the horse's hooves was a tattoo that drove extraneous
thoughts away. The Panjeri glass artisan I hired in Sorbold has had a,
good deed of time to make progress on the Lightcatcher; the ceiling of
the tower must be complete by now, the king thought, ruminating on what
Gurgus would look like when restored. A full circle of colored glass
panes, seven in all, each precisely fired to the purest hues of the
spectrum, the mountain peak would soon hold a power that would aid
him in his life's mission.
Keeping the Sleeping Child safe from the F'dor, fire demons that
endlessly sought to find her.
From the time he had begun the undertaking of building the tower, the
Firbolg king's mind had known even less peace than usual. His obsession
was coupled with uncertainty; he was by training and former trade an
assassin, a murderer, an efficient killer who had for centuries plied his
trade alone, choosing only the contracts that interested him, or that he felt
warranted his attention. Life and circumstance had taken him from an old
land, his birthplace, now dead and gone beneath the waves of the sea, and
deposited him here, in this new and uncertain place, where he had put his
skills to good use, seizing control of the loose, warlike tribes of
mountain-dwelling mongrels, forging a ragged kingdom of demi-humans.
Under his hand, with the help of his two friends, he had built them into a
functioning nation, a realm of silent strength and resolute independence.
Now he was a king. And he was still a skilled killer.
What he was not was an engineer.