"Mercedes Lackey - Alta" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

"You call yourself Kiron, son of Kiron," the Mouth said abruptly,
although the voice did not break the silence so much as insinuate itself
into the silence and part it. "So you have asked us to address you. And yet,
you do not think of yourself as that person."

How does the Mouth know that? It was something that Vetch himself
had not realized until the moment it was pointed out.

Vetch considered that statement in silence without retorting
immediately, giving himself time to analyze the thought. He had, over the
course of these travels, also learned to keep his mouth shut and think
about what a Mouth said before he responded to it, having shoved his foot
rather neatly into his own mouth a time or two in the early part of his
journey. "I have been Vetch, the serf, far longer than I have been Kiron,
the keeper of Avatre and dragon rider," he said at last.

"And yet, if you enter into your native land thinking of yourself as
Vetch, your own people will treat you thuswise," said the Mouth, with a
touch of warning in the tone. "Vetch the serf is a person of no worth and
no account, deserving of no consideration or special treatment."

He felt a kind of stillness settle into his gut. This was important. He
wasn't certain why it was important, but it felt important. Once again,
Vetch considered the words. Carefully. What was the Mouth trying to say
to him? "And?" he ventured.

"And, perhaps, they will try to take the dragon from you."

"She won't go," Vetch replied, with some heat, and yet sure of himself.
She wouldn't, of course, and this was absolutely the one thing he had no
fear of. Unlike the dragons that were captured as fledglings and tamed, he
had raised Avatre from the egg. She was as bonded to him as any creature
could beтАФas no other dragon, save one, had ever been bonded to another
human.

That one, and that other human, were perhaps the most important part
of his past that there was. Kashet, and his former Master, the Jouster Ari.
They flew in the service of the Great King of Tia. Both of them were his
enemies in name, now, and yet were his friends in fact. It was Ari who had
engineered his escape when Avatre had made her First Flight with him
clinging to her back, all hope of concealing her existence anymore gone off
on the kamiseen winds.

Ari and Kashet lay behind him somewhere, in the lands claimed by the
High King of Tia. He could not think of them without gratitude, and yet it
was a gratitude tinged with pain. If he could have, he would have never
left them. And yetтАФ

And yet they were Tians, and he was Altan, and if they ever met again,
they would probably have to fight each other, and possibly to the death.