"Zach Hughes - Killbird" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

her cookfire. I gave her a softened and well-cooked piece of deermeat.

"Seer," I said, "it is said that the dragons inhabit the far hills toward
the rising sun."

"So you are determined to go," she said.

"I ask your blessing and I beg to be allowed to share a bit of your
wisdom, as much as my poor head can absorb."

"You go to find death."

"Perhaps."

"As your father did."

"Then I will live in the memory of men as being brave."

"Ghosts hear no praise," she said. She sighed and coughed. "There be
dragons in the far hills. There have always been and there always will be,
for brave men such as Egan the Hunter, who last slew a dragon and
presented its gaudy guts to the elder Strabo, come but once in a thousand
moons."

"You think I am not one of those men?" I asked.

"You are but a child, and a dragon's teeth are sharp, far-reaching and
deadly."

"But I am the son of my father, and he slew a dragon."

"And was slain," she said grimly, "by still another dragon."

"I am fleet of foot," I said. "More so than anyone else in the family."

"A dragon's teeth travel with the swiftness of an evil thought," Seer
said. "And his eyes are death, searing and blasting and burning."

"I will not allow him to spit his teeth at me nor to catch me in his evil
eye," I said, full of the confidence of youth.

"Eban, my son," she said, "don't go. Stay. There are other prewomen.
The daughter of Bla the widow looks upon you with interest."

I shuddered. The daughter of the widow was ugly and of shrill voice.
Yuree's voice was the coo of the woodland birds.

"Well, there is this," Seer said. "Perhaps you will not find a dragon."
She chuckled. "I'm sure the others won't. So perhaps you won't and then it
will all be in the hands of the gods of man, foolish as that may be for those