"Meredith Ann Pierce - Firebringer 1 - Birth of the Firebringer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pierce Meredith Ann)

Poison
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Dreams
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Homecoming
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Full Circle
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Birth of the Firebringer
Meredith Ann Pierce
Beginning
When Alma created the world, most of it she made into the Great Grass Plain, which was not a
flat place, but rolling like a mareтАЩs back and covered all over with the greencorn and the haycorn
and the wild oats, knee high, so that when the wind stirred it, billowing, it looked like a mareтАЩs
winter coat blowing. And that is why some called the grasslands AlmaтАЩs back. It was not the truth,
for the Mother-of-all was not the world, but the Maker of the world.
With the stamp of one hoof, she made the Summer Sea, running shallow and warm even in
wintertime. And with a little dig of her other heel, she raised the Gryphon Mountains upon its
northern shore. Ranging north from there spread the dark Pan Woods, tangled and close, where
only the blue-bodied goatlings roamed. Somewhere to the eastern north lay the Smoking Hills,
where the red dragons denned, and due north across the Plain lay the Hallow Hills, a sacred place
to the children-of-the-moon.
And that was all that was known of the world to the people I shall tell of in this tale. They lived
in a great valley on the northern verges of the Woods. To the gryphons, they had always been
aтАЩ├нtichi, the enemy, and the pans murmured and gestured among themselves of the ufp├║tlak,
four-footed walkers. The plains dwellers, being near cousins to those of whom I speak, called
them simply southlanders. But they named themselves the unicorns, which means the тАЬone-horned
ones,тАЭ for each bore upon the brow a single spiral shaft as sharp as river ice and harder than
hoof-breaking stone.
I am one of the fellows of this taleтАФI will not tell you which I am, though I promise that by the
end of the running you will know me. My tale touches how the Firebringer came to be born
among the unicorns, and what his coming meant to Aljan, son of Korr. But to start my tale, I must
begin a little before the Firebringer, on a day near winterтАЩs end when Jan was six years old,
nearly half-grown, though still counted among the colts. It had been a long, cold, dull winter, and
the princeтАЩs son longed fiercely for the fiery storms of spring.

Stormwind
Stormclouds were rolling in out of the south-east. They darkened half the sky. It had been storming all
day over the Gryphon Mountains, far on the horizonтАЩs edge. He had been watching the lightning there off
and on since midmorning, flickering like great, violent fireflies, and he wondered whether the rain would
spend itself before reaching the Vale of the Unicorns.
Jan paused on the trail heading up slope through the trees. He lifted his muzzle, his nostrils flared. The
savor of moist earth and evergreens filled him. Winter was done, the snow gone from the ground, but it
was not yet equinox. No new shoots sprouted on the slope, no new grass yet scattered among the