"Roger Taylor - Hawklan 4 - Into Narsindal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Taylor Roger)

hadnтАЩt the supplies to sit for the days it might take to blow itself out; the journey had already taken him
longer than he had anticipated. He would have to move on tomorrow, and would probably have to use
the Old Power both to guide himself and to survive.

He frowned as he realized just how deep was his reluctance to use this skill that he had struggled so long
to master. He recalled a comment his old teacher had made many years earlier.

тАШI sometimes wonder whether we use it, or it uses us,тАЩ he had said. тАШItтАЩs so beyond our real
understanding.тАЩ

It had been a passing comment, lightly made, but it had stuck like a barbed dart in his young acolyteтАЩs
mind, subsequently making him work as hard at being able to sustain himself without the Power as he
was skilled in using it. When later he had become head of the Order, this attitude had inevitably
percolated down to permeate all its members.

тАШWeтАЩre teachers,тАЩ he would say. тАШWe canтАЩt teach people anything if we canтАЩt live as they live, strive as
they strive.тАЩ

But he knew that his real motivation was deeper than that and not accessible to such simple logic.

The Old Power was the power of the Great Searing, from which and by which all things were formed,
and from whose terrible heat had walked Ethriss and the Guardians, followed silently by Sumeral with
lesser banes at His heels.

Faced with the terrible dilemma that SumeralтАЩs teaching of war had presented him, Ethriss had given the
Cadwanol the knowledge of how to use the Old Power so that they might aid both the Guardians and the
mortal armies of the Great Alliance of Kings and Peoples against the Uhriel and His vast and terrible
hordes.

However, as his teacher had said, to understand its use was not necessarily to understand its true nature.

Andawyr turned on his side and gazed at the stones, glowing even now with this very power. тАШHow can
we understand the true nature of such a thing?тАЩ he muttered softly.

Even Ethriss himself may not have understood it. According to the most ancient documents in the vast
archives of the Cadwanol, when questioned by his first pupils, all he had said, with a smile, was, тАШItis .тАЩ

тАШItis ,тАЩ Andawyr echoed softly into the still air of his tent.

He was right, he knew. While skill in the use of the Old Power must be studied and practiced and
improved, it should be used by humans only where all human skills had failed and great harm threatened.
Its use was not part of the gift that Ethriss had given to humanity.

тАШI created you to go beyond it,тАЩ he had also said; an enigmatic phrase that had taxed minds ever since.

It was a knowledge that he had reluctantly thrust into the hands of men for use as a weapon only when
their very existence and that of all things wrought by himself and the Guardians were threatened. Its
inherent dangers were demonstrated all too clearly by SumeralтАЩs use of it to corrupt the three rulers who
were to become His Uhriel.