"Andre Norton & Lackey, Mercedes - Elvenbane 1 -The Elvenbane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

of burned and blistered skin.

I will not die. I will not! I am Serina Daeth, and I will live and have revenge!
So she began to crawl, with the same mindless determination with which she
had continued to walk. Somewhere out here, there must be shelter, water.
She would find both. Someone must live out here. She would buy their aid,
with whatever it took.

But it was so hot. .

Chapter 2

NOTHING VEILED THE brilliance of the sky, a clear and flawless
turquoise bowl inverted over the undulating dunes of the desert, and the sun
blazed in the east in solitary glory. Alamarana closed her inner eyelids
against the white glare of sun-on-sand below her, spread her wings until her
muscles strained, and spiraled in an ever-lower circle in the thermal she had
chosen. Her destination, the ruin of a long-abandoned dragon-lair complex,
was hardly more than a flaw in the silver-gilt sand beneath her scarlet-and-
gold wings, but the pool beside it was visible at any height, reflecting the sky
above like an unwinking cerulean eye.

She corrected her course with tiny changes in the web of her wings as she
drifted a little away from her goal. Months ago she would have folded her
wings tight to her body and plummeted down on the ruins from above,
ending her dive in a glorious, sand-scattering backwash of braking wing-
beats. Not today. Not while she still carried the little one; no recklessness
when she would be risking two, not one, with her aerobatics.

She tilted her wings, spilled air, dropped a little, spilled air again. The
spring-fed pool beckoned with a promise of serenity; she was tired, wing and
shoulder muscles aching with the strain of so much flying, and glad this stop
marked the end of her journey. Already she had spent her appointed times on
Father Dragon's mountaintop, in the surf beneath the cliffs that stood sentry
on the Northern Sea, and deep within the redolent tree-trunk "halls" of the
endless cedars of Taheavala Forest. Thus she had joined with air, water, and
earth--and this final station on her pilgrimage represented a melding with
the element of fire. Not for all dragons, this pilgrimage of the elements, but
for a shaman it was the nearest to mandatory the dragons ever came.

She furled her wing-sails a little, angling her flight into a tighter curve, and
drifted downward until she was a body-length from the ground, and close to
stalling speed. She spread her huge wings to their fullest and cupped the air
beneath them, hovering for a moment before dropping as lightly as any bird
to the sand.

The heat felt wonderful after the chill of the upper air. For a moment she
kept her wings spread, and soaked up the blessed sun-rays with her eyes half-
closed and all four of her taloned claws digging happily into the burning
sands. She wriggled her toes in luxury, reveling in the heat, and in the