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

AND THE GRAIN OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED
ARMIES
THAT HARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP OF THE CASTLE
WHERE PYRRHUS THE FIREBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD
BENEATH THE DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS,
WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS COVERING ARMIES.
FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH
HAS BURNED AND BURNED WITH HIS EFFACING HAND,
A BARREN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS,
AND Firebringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS
NAME.

I sat on the cold stone floor and laughed and cried
quietly, exultantly. I waited there an hour, perhaps two, as
the "Song of the Rending" ended and began again. I
wondered briefly if this were the echo of Arion himself, if I
was hearing not only the words but the voice of the bard
my father had killed a generation back.
I decided it did not matter. All that mattered was the
truth of the words and the truth of the telling. Arion's song
had marked my grandfather as a traitor, but it had preserved
the land, for what bandit or goblin would care to invade a
fire-blasted country? Orestes's song had rescued Alecto's
name, at the price of flame and ruin and his own life. So
when Arion's song returned again, I was ready to hear it, to
commit it to memory, to wander these caves until I
recovered the light, the fresh air, the vellum or hide on
which to write the lines that would save my father's line,
my line.
It did return, and I remembered each word, with a
memory half trained in the listening, half inherited from a
father with bardic gifts. For the first time in a long while,
perhaps the first time ever, I was thankful for who he was,
and I praised the gifts Orestes had passed on to me.
And then, with a whisper that drowned out all other
voices, at once the beast spoke. It was a dragon!
So HE HAS SENT ANOTHER FROM UP IN THE
LIGHT... O MOST WELCOME . . . THE STRUGGLE IS
OVER IS OVER . . . REST THERE REST... NO
CONTINUING ... NO ... NO ...
Oh. And it seemed not at all strange now to fall to the
monster without struggle or issue, to rid myself of the
shifting past and the curse of these scars and their burning,
and to rid all above me of the land's torture . . .
So I stood there, ridiculously clutching pen and ink,
and though it was already darker than I could imagine
darkness to be, I closed my eyes, and the alien heat
engulfed me, and with it the evil smell of rust and offal and old
blood. The jaws closed quickly around me as I heard a man's voice,
saying, I HAVE KILLED ARION, AND THE BURNING