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

. And yet the gifts persisted, as if the land itself needed them.

An interesting thought. Not now, though... Alara tucked that notion away for
later contemplation, and proceeded with her own magic-weavings, tapping
into the upwelling magic of the pool to lend her the strength and power for
such a complicated shifting. She was here for a purpose, and idle thoughts of
elves and humans could wait until that purpose was accomplished.
She drew yet more of the power away from the spring, spinning it into a
gossamer thread that sparkled to her innersight and caressed her with a rich
and heady taste like the sparkling vintages she had enjoyed in her elven
form. She took the power to herself and spun it through her body until she
shimmered like a mirage from nose to tail-tip. Tension built in her, as she
drank in more and more of the power, drank it in and held it until she could
hold no more, until she strained with it as a water-skin filled nigh to bursting.

Now--she thought, and felt the ripple of change start at her tail and course
through her in a wave, leaving in its wake--

Stone.

Not just any stone. Fire-born stone, the frozen wrath of volcanoes, the glassy
blood from the heart of the world. The closest any living thing could come to
fire itself.

In the blink of an eye, she shifted. No longer was there a dragon curled
shining in the sun. In her place, the hollow of sand cupped a dull obsidian
boulder, vaguely draconic in shape, smooth and sand-worn as the stones of
the wall behind her, taking in the blistering heat of the sun's rays and
absorbing them into its dusty black surface.

Now she could relax and let her mind drift where it would. Four times she
had shifted: into an ice-eagle, a species near as large as the dragons
themselves and so at home with the currents of the upper airs that they ate
and slept on the wing; into a careless delphin, as at one with the waters as the
ice-eagle was in the air, into a mighty cedar, with roots deep in the soil--and
now, most difficult of all because it was not living, the fire-stone. Not all
female dragons need take this pilgrimage of powers when a birth was
imminent; only the shamans, like Alara, to fix a oneness with this world into
their offspring, in hopes that one or more would in turn take up shamanistic
duties to serve dragonkind.

Indeed, she found herself hyperaware of the earth about her, of the molten
core beneath her. Here and there, close to the ruins and near to the surface,
she sensed deposits of metallic salts. She made careful note of those; they
might be needed, one day, when deposits nearer Leveanliren's Lair were
worked out. It would have been better if the deposits nearer home had been
purer ores, and better still if they had been salts as these were; dragons
needed substantial quantities of metal in their diets--the closer to pure, the
better--for the growth of claws, horns, and scales.