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

strength the sun's rays gave back to her. Within her, the little one stirred
restlessly, bumping against her ribs. Her time would be soon, now, though
unless she suffered some kind of strain, not until Alara willed it so. That was
one control, at least, that a female shaman had over her biological destiny.

She basked with no thought of time, until the sun rose to its zenith and the
sand beneath her cooled in the shadow of her body. Finally she sighed, and
opened her eyes.

I am wasting time. The sooner I finish, the sooner I can be home. She turned
her head slowly, looking for a good place to settle for her final meditation.

The ruin had been so long abandoned that there was little left of it. Its most
notable feature was a single long, low wall, rising from drifts of shining sand
like the spine of a snake, the sinuous curves typical of draconic
workmanship. Beyond it, something square rose barely above the surface,
the hints of a foundation, architecture copied from elves or humans. A heap
of pink shapes marked the toppled, sand-worn stones of what had been a
tower. A few plants and scrawny grasses, a half dozen trees, were the only
growing things; all were within half a dragon-length of the pool.

Beside the wall was the stone-rimmed pool itself, of course. Spring-fed, and
colder than her kind preferred, it was so pure as to be dangerous to drink in
any quantity, at least for the dragons, who thrived on the alkaline salt-pools
that poisoned other creatures.

This was not a site of disaster, nor even of ill-chance. There was no hint of
violence here, only the work of time and the hand of nature.

Stupid to settle here in the first place, so near the elven lands...
Irilianale's Lair, it had been called. "As impulsive as Iri" was the saying, and
"More persuasive than Irilianale," by which the entire story could be implied.
Iri had taken a liking to the spot, a desert oasis perfect for the heat-basking
the dragons, with their high metabolism, craved. Though the pool could not
be drunk from regularly with any safety, there were plenty of deposits of
metal salts nearby. And then Iri had discovered the real treasure of the site...

And somehow managed to convince a score of otherwise sane dragons to
follow his lead.

But nearness to elven lands and lack of game forced the dragons to abandon
it before very long. Every virtue but one that the site possessed was
duplicated elsewhere in places of greater safety. The only attraction that was
not duplicated lay at the roots of the pool itself, for the rift in the earth that
let the spring rise to the surface marked a "spring" of another kind. The
energies of magic leaked through here, mingling with the waters and keeping
them pure, here where six ley-lines met in a perfectly symmetrical star. This
magic that kept the water of the pool free of the alkaline salts that saturated
most of the water in the Mehav Desert was something that kept the dragons
returning even after the settlement had been abandoned. It was a source of