"Mercedes Lackey - Dragon Jousters 4 - Aerie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

work. And probably a few divine revelations. Some of the gods of Alta bore a suspicious resemblance to
the evil gods of Tia, and vice versa. It was probably a good idea for this reconciliation to take place far
away from the ordinary run of worshippers.

And so they had come, the teachers, the High Priests, the scholars and scribes, from temples large and
small. This was not a stripping of the temples bare by any means; though Sanctuary was indeed becoming
a city, it was by no means big enough to hold more than a fraction of those who served the gods of both
nations. Nevertheless, there were more than enough takers for every available scrap of living space. The
kamiseen winds, that had been so generous in uncovering portions of the buried city as they were
needed, were scouring bare desert plain now. There was nothing more to be uncovered.

That influx of people had been more than enough to push the Jousters out.

And, truth to tell, a city full of the priestly castes was not a comfortable place to live, not for Kiron at
least, and mutterings from the other Jousters made him think that they felt the same. The latest batch of
youngsters, chief of which were Coresan's hatch, were already at Aerie, and though repairs were far
from complete, there seemed every good reason why the move should be speeded up. When they had
first come to Sanctuary, they had taken over a temple complex that seemed to have been dedicated to
Haras, or some god very like him. That had been all well and good when there were only a handful of
priests, but the devotees of Haras had descended in droves, and had made it quite clear that while having
dragons and their Jousters dwelling in the workshops of the god was not precisely blasphemy, it was
certainly being looked at with a somewhat stern eye.

Having the Priests of Haras looking over one's shoulder with a certain amount of impatience was more
than enough incentive to find some other quarters for the dragons.

Well, now the priests had taken possession of the god's temple. They were happy. Presumably the god
was happy. The Jousters were far from the eyes of the priest, and so it was to be hoped that they were at
last happy. And, truth to tell, when it was finished, and even now in some ways, Aerie was far more
suited to the dragons than Sanctuary was.

Here they had good shelter from thekamiseen winds and sands, as good or better than he'd enjoyed in
the dragons' own compound in Mefis. There were cliff tops for dragons to bask on, and a hot spring for
the humans to bathe in. Here, pens were set up as the bottom floor of these rock-carved "houses," so
there was no need, ever, to shelter them from the rains. They were central to all the good hunting
grounds, and there was enough browse here for them to keep their own herds to supplement that hunting.
Eventually, when Kaleth's scheme to farm incense and rare plants here came to pass, they would even be
self-sufficient. And here dragons could prowl or romp in the canyon bottoms that served as streets,
unlike in Sanctuary, where they could scarcely fit in the narrow avenues between buildings and where an
increasingly large number of people regarded a free-roaming dragon with apprehension.

There was a lot to appreciate here, even if the place had been abandoned for centuries. So had
Sanctuary, and Kaleth, the original band of refugees from Alta, and the Blue People had made it livable
while living in it. If they had done so to Sanctuary, the Jousters could do so for Aerie, and if the Jousters
were not particularly suited to the task, well, neither were those who had initially followed Kaleth out
here.

And he ought to be personally grateful for this much; as someone who had been camping out here for
some little whileтАФfirst when he was keeping an eye on the half-wild dragon Coresan's nest, and later,
after the destruction of Alta's fabulous city and port in order to get some desperately needed privacy,