"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

He looked as if he were going to say something, but subsided instead.
"Besides," Blade continued, taking her advantage while she still had it, "people have been going to
this outpost for years, and no one has seen anythingтАФeither there or on the way. Don't you think by now
if there was going to be any trouble, someone would have encountered it?"
Amberdrake dropped his eyes in defeat and shook his head. "There you have me," he admitted.
"Except for one thing. We don't know what lies beyond that outpost and its immediate area. The Haighlei
have never been there, and neither have we. For all we know, there's an army of refugees from the wars
about to swarm over you, or a renegade wizard about to take a force of his own across the landтАФ"
"And that," Blade said with finality, "is precisely why we will be there in the first place. It is our duty
to be vigilant."
He couldn't refute that, and he didn't try.

Blade extracted herself from her parents with the promise that she and Tad would not take off until
they arrived. With one pack slung over her back and the other suspended from her shoulder, she hurried
up the six levels of staircase that led in turn to the narrow path which would take her to the top of the
cliff. She was so used to running up and down the ladder-like staircases and the switchback path that she
wasn't even breathing heavily when she reached the top. She had spent almost all of her life here, after all,
and verticality was a fact of life at White Gryphon.
Below, on the westward-facing cliff the city was built from, she had been in cool shadow; she
ascended as the invisible sun rose, and both she and the sun broke free of the clinging vestiges of night at
the same time. Golden fingers of light met and caressed her as she took the last few steps on the path. It
would be a perfect morning; there were no clouds marring the horizon to presage storms to the east. Red
skies were lovelyтАФbut red skies required clouds. If I am going to be traveling, I prefer a morning
like this one; not a cloud in the sky and the air dry, cool, and quiet.
At the top of the cliff a great expanse of meadow and farmland composed of gently rolling hills
stretched out before her. It was completely indefensible, of course; like Ka'venusho, Urtho's stronghold,
there was no decent "high ground" to defend. This was why the city itself had been built into the cliff, with
the only access being a single, narrow path. You couldn't even rain boulders down on White Gryphon
from above, for the path had been cut into the cliff so cleverly that it channeled objects falling down from
the edge away from the city entirely.
Judeth's idea, but it took some very clever stonecrafters to put her idea into solid form.
At the edge were large constructions of wooden frames and pulleys that could lower huge amounts
of material down to the first level of the city; that was how food was brought down from the farms up
here. Those could be dismantled or destroyed in mere moments by a very few people. Nothing that was
up here would be left to be used by an enemy if there ever was an attack.
The farmers used to live in White Gryphon and travel up each day to tend their flocks and fields;
now they didn't bother with the trip. There was a second village up here on the rim, a village of
farmhouses and barns, a few warehouses and workshops, and the pens where herds were brought during
the few days of each year that the weather was too bad to keep the herds in the fields. If severe winter
storms came from the sea instead of the landward side, the herds could be driven into the shelter of the
forest, and those who were not sent to watch over them could take shelter within the rock walls of White
Gryphon.
The stockade and supply warehouse of the Silvers was up here as well. Space was too precious in
the city for any to be wasted on bulk stores except in an emergency. And as for the stockade, most
punishment involved physical labor in the fields with the proceeds going to pay back those who had been
wronged. Since most crime in the city involved theft or minor damage, that was usually acceptable to the
victims. There had been thoseтАФa fewтАФwho were more dangerous. Those were either imprisoned up
here, under bindings, orтАФdealt with, out of the sight of the city. After Hadanelith, no one was ever exiled
again. The possibility that another dangerous criminal might survive exile was too great to risk.
Just outside the stockade was a landing platform. Sitting squarely in the middle of it was what