"Recluce - 07 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

TheChaosBalance
The Chaos Balance
аby L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
Copyright й 1997
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010
Torо Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com
а
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To Lara, and her mother
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а
I
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THE ANGELS OF darkness made the Roof of the World their home, and after
deceiving the followers of light who had eagerly welcomed them, they
wielded the ancient and dreadful weapons of Heaven and vanquished those
who rejoiced in the light.
аа In those first dark years, there were none at first among the dark
ones who could descend to the lower lands and bear the heat, and the
lords of mankind, their true daughters, and their consorts rejoiced that
this was so.
аа For the angels of temptation bore blades that slashed through armor
and loosed arrowheads that treated iron bucklers as if they were rotten
wood, and they raised a mighty stronghold called Westwind, anchored on
Tower Black, that rivaled Freyja in power. And the followers of light,
who had ages earlier forsaken the powers of the heavens, relinquished the
barren heights to the dark angels and their evil powers.
аа The dark angels were women who made a mockery out of hearth and home,
who reviled men and laughed as they destroyed all the armies of the
Westhorns sent against them, as they forced the great lords to heap dust
and ashes upon their own heads and to bend their knees and pay tribute,
and to stand helplessly as their daughters were tempted from their
hearths and consorts.
а аYet an even more deadly evil was to flow from the Roof of the World,
and none knew it, from the mighty Nylan, smith of the angels, he who
builded the Tower Black, he who forged the blades of night and the arrows
of the storms....
аааааааа Colors of White
аааааааа (Manual of the Guild at Fairhaven)
аааааааа Preface
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II
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THE WIRY AND silver-haired man paused at the end of the causeway from
Tower Black, his breath white in the sunlit chill. His eyes lifted from
the cleared stones that led from Tower Black- the tower whose stones he
had wrested from the mountains, the tower he had raised to shelter the