"Tanya Huff - Crystal 1 - Child of the Grove" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

breeding of man and animal, they created the Werfolk in a mockery of the
Mother's work.
And then the Wizards dared to create something using the very Earth itself.
They formed mighty Drag-

CHILD OF THE GROVE 9
Dragons, giant beasts with command of fire and frost, rulers of the air or
seas. But the Earth was the Body of the Mother and the Wizards could not
control it. They had created their own destruction.
The Dragons turned on the Wizards and in a battle that changed the shape of
the land, slew and devoured their would-be masters. The Dragons that survived
returned to the Earth from which they were made.
It is said that, at the end of the Age of Wizards, Death smiled.

One
"Mother?"
There was no answer, so the tall young man reached out a slender hand and
placed it gently on the bark of the silver birch before him.
"Mother?" he said again.
The tree stirred under his hand, as if, newly awakened, it sighed and
stretched. He stepped back and waited. Slowly, very slowly, his mother drew
herself out of her tree.
She was tall, with ivory skin, silver hair, and eyes the green of new spring
leaves. Her name was Milthra and she was the eldest of the Sisters of the
Sacred Grove. She looked barely older than her son.
She opened her arms and he came into them, then she held him at arm's length
and smiled.
"You have grown, Rael. You look more like your father every time I see you. "
He looked so much like his father that her heart ached with the memories. Not
for many years had Raen, King of Ardhan, come to the Sacred Grove, and Milthra
had to be content with seeing the man she loved in the face of their son. Raen
would not come to her for reasons of his own. She could not go to him for a
hamadryad dies away from her tree.
She hid a sigh from her too perceptive child and brushed a lock of blue-black
hair off his face. "Are you well? Are you happy?"
"I'm both well and happy, Mother. " Rael returned 10

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her smile, his eyes lit from within by green fires. Immortal eyes in the face
of mortal man.
Rael could no longer be content spending whole summers with only his mother,
her sisters, and the forest for company-the king's court held more attractions
for a young man of seventeen-but when he had time to spare, he spent it at the
Grove. It was peaceful there and, unlike his father, his mother had time to
listen. No courtiers or supplicants made demands on her, for no one found the
circle of birches without her help.
Until Rael's birth the Grove had been legend only. But when the king of Ardhan
showed his son to the people in the Great Square outside the palace gates, he
named Milthra as the child's mother and placed the Grove firmly in the real
world. It was fortunate the king was popular and well-liked, for many