"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Valdemar - Darians Tale 03 - Owlknight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Up on the cliff, Snowfire waved both arms back, signifying that he understood
the Council was gathering. He disappeared into the dark opening in the cliff
face behind him, presumably to fetch his mate, Nightwind. His errand of
notifying Snowfire and Nightwind completed, Darian Firkin k?Vala k?Valdemar
turned back and entered the shaded and secluded pathways of his Vale, heading
for the Council House himself.

An odd and sometimes seemingly contradictory combination of qualities was Darian.
A Journeyman-level Mage, from a land which did not have such things until very
recently - a citizen of the country of Valdemar, yet also a Hawkbrother of the
once-secretive Tayledras, adopted into the clan of k?Vala - even his clothing
reflected those contradictions.

He wore soft fabrics of Hawkbrother manufacture; the loose trousers, gathered at
the ankle, that both sexes wore, and the wide-sleeved, open-collared shirt that
was also a staple among the Tayledras. Good, strong dyes were readily available
in the Vale, so the rich gold of his shirt and brown of his trousers were
commonplace inside the Vale, though not necessarily in the Valdemaran lands
beyond.

But the embroidered, fitted vest he wore, though not of Valdemaran manufacture,
was definitely of the local style. Of light brown leather lined in darker brown
silk, it was embroidered in a motif of owls. Once again, contradiction - the cut
of the vest was Valdemaran, the motif was clearly Tayledras.

So there it was, contradictions implied in his very dress, contradictions that
sometimes confused others, but never confused him. For all the contradictions,
Darian was comfortable in his dual citizenship, and sometimes took an impish
delight in how uncomfort-able it made others.

He looked up at the sound of a crow?s catcall just above his head, laughing when
he saw a falcon playing ?tag? with a crow, flying in and out of the branches. In
open air, the falcon would have had the advantage, but not in among the trees.
The streamer trailing from the falcon?s bracelets was less than half its
original length, but the crow still had most of his streamer, and mocked the
falcon enthusiastically. Both were bondbirds, of course, the specially bred,
highly intelligent companions of the Hawkbrothers, and the falcon seemed to be
taking his imminent defeat in good humor. Crows took just about everything in
good humor; of all the birds bred by the Hawkbrothers as bondbirds, the crows
had the liveliest sense of humor. Ravens were more sardonic, most of the falcons
tended to be quick-witted but extremely focused, hawks a little slower but more
deliberate, and owls somewhat ponderous in their thinking. Darian?s own bondbird
was an owl; in fact, it was one of largest birds in the Vale. Kuari was an eagle-owl,
a bird which dwarfed all other birds except the bondbird eagles. Since there
were no Tayledras with eagles in this Vale, Kuari and his parents Hweel and Huur
were the largest birds here.

Now that the temperature was under control, the flora of the Vale was in the
process of undergoing a shift from what had been native to this place to plants
and even trees that could only be found in Tayledras Vales. There were more