"Dan Parkinson - Dragonlance Tales - Cataclysm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parkinson Dan)

had bitten deep and his face was forever changed into a
stiffened mask of grief. A fugitive and a vagabond he was
upon Krynn, and wherever he traveled, they turned him
away. To Kaolin he went, and to Garnet, as far north as
Thelgaard Keep and south to the coast of Abanasinia. In all
places, his scars and his story arrived before him - the tale
of a bard who, with a single verse of a song, had set his
country to blaze and ruin.
He took to bride a woman from Mercher, orphaned by the
invasion and struck mute by goblin atrocity as they passed
through with their flames and long knives. Orestes spirited
her away to the woods of Lemish, where in seclusion they
lived a dozen years in narrow hope.
A dozen years, the druidess said, in which the child they
awaited never came.
That part I knew. Mother had told me when I was very
little, the soft arc of her hand assuring me how much they
had waited and planned and imagined.
That part I knew. And Mother had shared his death with
none but me. But I had never heard just how he had died.
"In despair," the Lady Yman told me, the cavern
lapsing into shadow as her brown, leafy robes blocked out
the firelight, the reflection on the ice. "Despair that his
country was burning still, and that no children of his would
extinguish the fires. He did not know about you. Your
mother had come to me, and she knew, was returning to
your cottage to tell him, joyous through the wide woods.
"She found what you've seen. Orestes could wait no
longer. Your mother brought me his note to read to her: I
HAVE KILLED ARION, AND THE BURNING WILL
NEVER STOP, it said. THE LAND IS CURSED. I AM
CURSED. MY LINE IS CURSED. I DIE."
L'Indasha reached for me as I reeled, as the room
blurred through my hot tears.
"Trugon? Trugon!"
REDEEM NOR CONTINUE. I understood now, about
his anger and guilt and the terrible, wicked thing he had
done. The BEATHA raced through me, and the torchlight
surged and quickened.
"Why did you finally tell me?" I asked.
"To save your life," the lady replied. She passed her
hand above the broken water, and I saw a future where fires
arose without cause and burned unnaturally hot, and my
scars were afire, too, devouring my skin, my face, erasing
all reason and memory until the pain vanished and my life
as well.
"This ... this is what will be, Lady?"
"Perhaps." She crouched beside me, her touch cool on
my neck, its relief coursing into my face, my limbs.
"Perhaps. But the future is changeable, as is the past."