"Melanie Rawn - Dragon Prince 1 - Dragon Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rawn Melanie)

when Zehava attempted to press Rohan into other activities, his own wife and
daughter flew at him like furious she-dragons.
Zehava grinned to himself as he rode through the scorching heat toward
Rivenrock Canyon. Tobin should have been born the male child. As a young girl
she had been able to out-ride and out-knife any boy her age. Marriage and
motherhood had calmed her, but she was still capable of black-eyed rages to
match Zehava's own. Part of Chaynal's marriage contract stipulated that she
was forbidden to bring a dagger into their bedchamber. Chay's idea of a joke,
of course, which had brought
howls of laughter from everyoneтАФincluding TobinтАФbut it added to the family
legend, which was something Zehava despaired of Rohan ever doing.
Not that Tobin was lacking in femininity, he mused, glancing at Chaynal again.
Only a completely enchanting woman could have captured and held the fiery
young Lord of Radzyn Keep. After six years of marriage and the birth of twin
sons, the princess and her lord were as besotted with each other as ever. A
pity Rohan hadn't yet found himself a girl to stiffen his spine and his
manhood. There was nothing like the desire to impress a pretty girl to turn
boy into man.
Zehava's prediction proved accurate: the dragon had chosen the lookout spire
at the canyon mouth for his perch. The hunt paused a full measure away to
admire the beast, dark gold as the sands that had hatched him, with a wingspan
greater than the height of three tall men. His malignant glare could be felt
even at this distance.
"A real grandsire of a beast," Chay murmured appreciatively. "Have a care, my
prince."
Zehava took the caution as it had been intended, not as a warning that he
might lose this contest, but as a reminder not to damage himself during it. If
he came home with more than a few scratches, his wife would alternately coddle
his injuries and rage at his clumsiness in acquiring them. Princess Milar was
as legendary for her temper as for the golden looks, so rare here in the
Desert, that she had passed on to her son.
The twenty riders fanned out, taking up positions according to the etiquette
of the game, and Zehava rode forward alone. The dragon eyed him balefully, and
the prince smiled. This was a profoundly angry beast. The stench of oil was
rank in the hot air, oozing from glands at the base of the long, spiked tail.
He was ready to mate the females hidden in their caves, and anyone who
distracted him from his purpose was marked for a painful death,
"Hot for it, aren't you, Devil-jaws?" Zehava crooned low in his throat. He
rode at a steady pace, his cloak blowing back from his shoulders, and stopped
half a measure in front of the rocky spire. Striated sandstone in
a dozen shades of amber and garnet rose like the Flametower at Zehava's castle
of Stronghold. The dragon clung to the stone with claws thick as a man's
wrist, balance easily kept despite the repeated lashings of the gold-and-black
patterned tail. The two rulers of the Desert sized each other up. On the
surface it was a ludicrously unequal contest: the massive, dagger-toothed
dragon against one man on horseback. But Zehava had an advantage that had made
him the champion in such encounters nine times before, more than any man
living and part of the family legend. Zehava understood dragons.
This one burned to fill his dozen or more females, but he was growing old and
knew it. There were battle scars on the dark golden hide, and one talon hung