"Modesitt, L E - Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

silica to burn or to break or cut. Yet they too succumbed to the
wasteland, and to the shellbeetles that devoured them. That was
the harsh way of the lands beneath the Plateau and the reason why
few liked Iron Stem, even those living there.

Some complained about the wind, the way it blew hard and hot
through the summer and cold and bitingly dry through the winter.
Some said that each wind was different and none were to be
trusted. Others complained about the dryness, because little but
quarasote and an occasional juniper grew in the Iron Valleys.

The same people complained that in winter there was no heat in
the sun except where it struck the eternastones of the high road
that ran from Eastice in the far north down through Soulend and
Iron Stem and then Dekhron, and across the River Vedra, and far
into the south of Lanachrona. There were other high roads, too,
and while they had been traveled heavily in the days of the
Duarchy, most times now only a handful of traders or travelers
could be found on any of them.

Some thirty vingts to the east stood the mighty Aerial Plateau,
whose stone ramparts ran straight upward six thousand yards or
more. All who had tried to climb the Plateau failed long before they
reached the top. Most vanished, their bones occasionally
discovered by Alucius or some other herder.

In the last years of the Duarchy, the Duarches had dumped the
malcontents and worse in Iron Stem to work the iron mines and
great mill, guarded by the Cadmians with their lightning-shaped
blades. Later, after the Cataclysm and the fall of the Duarchy, the
mines played out over the millennia, and Iron Stem withered from a
small city into a small and struggling town. Then, for a long time, all
that sustained Iron Stem had been the herders from the north, the
lumber mills in Wesrigg, and the dustcat works. There Gortal's
scutters gathered the dustcat dander and processed it into the
dreamdust, which was worth more than nightsilk in the Lanachronan
cities of the southЧand far more even than that for the little that
traveled the ancient roads back to Lustrea in the east.

His concentration returned to the lead nightram, even as he
wondered why the soarer had seemed to look at him and whether
Wendra had sensed the winged marvel. With a rueful smile, he
shook his head and urged the gray to catch up to the lead rams, his
eyes checking the bushes and the hummocks for traces of wolves.
Sanders left neither tracks nor traces.

As Alucius's mount carried him eastward, his eyes flicked back
toward the long ridge that separated him from his steadЧand from
Wendra. After more than three years of marriage, skilled and
Talented as Wendra was, Alucius still fretted about leaving her.