"Patricia A. McKillip - The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbrea" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

breath, in the icy mist of its bowels, hoarfrost cold, that grips your land in winter the way another dragon's
breath might burn it to flinders. One month out of the year, in the warmth of suns-crossing, it looses its
ring-grip on your island, slides into the sea, and goes to mate. Its ice-kingdom begins to melt. It returns,
loops its length around its mountain of ice and gold. Its breath freezes the air once more, locks the river
into its bed, you into your houses, the gold into its mountain, and you curse the cold and drink until the
next dragon-mating." He paused. There was not a sound around him. "I've been to strange places in this
world, places even colder than this, where the suns never cross, and I have seen such monsters. They are
ancient as rock, white as old ice, and their skin is like iron. They breed winter and they cannot be killed.
But they can be driven away, into far corners of the world where they are dangerous to no one. I'm trained
for this. I can rid you of your winter. Harrowing is dangerous work, and usually I am highly paid. But I've
been looking for this ice-dragon for many years, through its spoor of legend and destruction. I tracked it
here, one of the oldest of its kind, to the place where I was born. All I ask from you is a guide."
He stopped, waiting. Peka, her hands frozen around her glass, heard someone swallow. A voice rose
and faded from the tavern-kitchen; sap hissed in the fire. A couple of the miners were smiling; the others
looked satisfied and vaguely expectant, wanting the tale to continue. When it didn't, Kor Flynt, who had
mined Hoarsbreath for fifty years, spat wormspoor into the fire. The flame turned a baleful gold, and then
subsided. "Suns-crossing," he said politely, reminding a scholar of a scrap of knowledge children acquired
with their first set of teeth, "cause the seasons."
"Not here," Ryd said. "Not on Hoarsbreath. I've seen. I know."
Peka's mother Ambris leaned forward. "Why," she asked curiously, "would a miner's son become a
dragon harrower?" She had a pleasant, craggy face; her dark hair and her slow, musing voice were like
Peka's. Peka saw the Dragon-Harrower ride between two answers in his mind. Meeting Ambris' eyes, he
made a choice, and his own eyes strayed to the fire.
"I left Hoarsbreath when I was twelve. When I was fifteen, I saw a dragon in the mountains east of
the city. Until then, I had intended to come back and mine. I began to learn about dragons. The first one I
saw burned red and gold under the suns' fire; it swallowed small hills with its shadow. I wanted to call it,
like a hawk. I wanted to fly with it. I kept studying, meeting other people who studied them, seeing other
dragons. I saw a night-black dragon in the northern deserts; it scales were dusted with silver, and the
flame that came out of it was silver. I saw people die in that flame, and I watched the harrowing of that
dragon. It lives now on the underside of the world, in shadow.
We keep watch on all known dragons. In the green mid-world belt, rich with rivers and mines, forests
and farmland, I saw a whole mining town burned to the ground by a dragon so bright I thought at first it
was sun-fire arching down to the ground. Someone I loved had the task of tracking that one to its cave,
deep beneath the mine-shafts. I watched her die, there. I nearly died. The dragon is sealed into the bottom
of the mountain, by stone and by words. That is the dragon which harrowed me." He paused to sip
wormspoor. His eyes lifted, not to Ambris, but to Peka. "Now do you understand what danger you live in?
What if one year the dragon sleeps through its mating-time, with the soft heat of the suns making it
sluggish from dreaming? You don't know it's there, wrapped around your world. It doesn't know you're
there, stealing its gold. What if you sail your boats full of gold downriver and find the great white bulk of
it sprawled like a wall across your passage? Or worse, you find its eye opening like a third, dead sun to
see your hands full of its gold? It would slide its length around the mountain, coil upward and crush you
all, then breathe over the whole of the island, and turn it dead-white as its heart, and it would never sleep
again."
There was another silence. Peka felt something play along her spine like the thin, quavering, arthritic
fingers of wind. "It's getting better," she said, "your tale." She took a deep swallow of wormspoor and
added, "I love sitting in a warm, friendly place listening to tales I don't have to believe."
Kor Flynt shrugged. "It rings true, lass."
"It is true," Ryd said.
"Maybe so," she said. "And it may be better if you just let the dragon sleep."
"And if it wakes unexpectedly? The winter killed my father. The dragon at the heart of winter could