"03 - Sunrunner's Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

"The one she can speak to?" Sionell almost lost her balance and Riyan held on more tightly to her waist.

"Careful!" he said. "She doesn't really talk to herЧ more like shares feelings and pictures with her. Although Sioned says Elisel knows her name."

"You don't believe she does?" The girl turned her head, brows raised. "You're a Sunrunner, tooЧhave you ever tried it?"

"Never."

"Don't you want to?"

"Of course!" Riyan answered. "But Sioned isn't really sure how she does it, and she's cautioned the rest of us not to attempt it until she understands what really happens between her and the dragon."

"A wise precaution," Feylin added, eyeing her daughter. "It's a good thing you're not a Sunrunner, my pest, or you'd be wild to find a dragon of your own!"

"It'd be wonderful," Sionell murmured, gazing wistfully at the dragons. "It doesn't seem fairЧI know / can't ever touch one, but the faradh'im can, and Sioned won't even let them try! Think of all the things we could learn from them, and what we could tell them!"

Riyan blinked and nearly lost his hold on Sionell. There was one thing that dragons needed desperately to know if their population was to increase to a level Feylin considered safe. Could Sioned communicate it to her dragon?

He asked; Feylin shrugged. "She tried. She conjures a picture of hatchlings coming out of the cavesЧand Elisel whines and trembles, and shows her dragon corpses. Even though she's not old enough to have seen it for herself. Which indicates," she added with a pleased glint in her eyes, "that they communicate information to each other from one generation to the next rather neatly."

The sires keeping watch on the crater's lip bellowed suddenly, and the hatchlings reacted with a flurry of splashing water and flapping wings. Soon the evening sky was thick with dragons, circling over the lake until all were airborne. The sires trumpeted once more and the group set off for the south, where they would winter in the hidrien canyons and valleys of the Catha Hills. Several of the females lingered behind, including Sioned's russet dragon, to chase the slower hatchlings along. Riyan wondered if Sioned would be waiting at Stronghold for Elisel to fly past, waiting to greet her dragon on the last of the autumn sunlight.

Dinner being perforce over, Riyan ordered Jahnavi to have small cakes and hot taze sent up to each bedchamber, and dismissed his new squire for the evening. He then went to help Camigwen's nurse put her to bedЧnot an easy task, for the child had seen the dragons, too, and wanted an instant repeat of the morning's game with her

big brother. To the nurse's dismay, he obliged. Wearing wings made of a blanket, he swooped around the room while Jeni squealed with laughter and tried to "slay" him with a wooden spoon. At last Alasen came in, calmed the uproar, and had her daughter smartly in bed with the promise of one more game of dragons tomorrow before they left for Stronghold.

"But I thought you were going to stay for a little while," Riyan protested as they left Jeni to sleep under her nurse's watchful eyes. "I know Sorin wants Father's advice about Feruche. I was thinking of riding up there with him and Walvis tomorrow."

"Oh, don't worry about that. You three can go while I visit Sioned." She gestured him to a chair and seated herself on a couch, leaning forward to pour cups of steaming taze from the pitcher which had been placed on a low table. "Rohan wants us to look in on the work at Dragon's Rest, so we'll return to Princemarch through Dragon Gap. Just us and the horses, no baggage wains or anything. Although your father will probably spout some nonsense about having me carried in a litter the whole way. Sioned says he was absurd when your mother was pregnant with you and he was certainly that way before Jeni's birth."

Riyan chuckled. "From what I know about my mother, I can't see her paying any attention!"

"From what / know about her, she probably laughed in his face! I can tell it's in his head to stay here until spring. But if this child is a boy, he should be born at Castle Crag."

"Of course," Riyan agreed.

She shifted and looked down at her elegantly slippered feet. "I wanted to talk to you about that, actually."

He held up a staying hand and smiled. "I know what you're going to say. Skybowl is all I want, Alasen. I'd be a disaster in a place as grand as Castle Crag. You're a Princess of Kierst, born to that kind of life, and you'll teach it to your children. Your son can have Castle Crag with my profound gratitude."

"Are you sure?" she worried. "It's the most important keep in Princemarch until Dragon's Rest is finished. And even after, the whole of the north will be governed from there. And it's the major trading center in the Veresch.

Your talents could be put to excellent use at a busy castle

like that. And it is your right as Ostvel's eldest son."

Riyan shook his head. "He had absolutely nothing to give me until I was six winters old and Rohan gave him Skybowl. I don't want anything else, truly. I'm Desert-born and bred. I've seen enough of other places to know that this is where I belong."

"As long as you're certain. ..."