"Paul Thompson - [Elven Nations Trilogy 1] - Firstborn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thompson Paul B)

and he slid slowly down the trunk until he was sitting on his haunches,
back against the tree. His gaze remained on the canopy of leaves overhead.
What an odd forest this was. Not like home. Not like the woods of
SilvanostяГз
As in a dream, the prince saw the airy corridors of the Palace of
Quinari. The servants bowed to him, as they always did. He was on his
way to a feast in the Hall of Balif. There would be simmered roasts, legs
of lamb, fruits dripping with juice, fragrant sauces, and delicious drafts of
sweet nectar.
Kith-Kanan came to a door. It was just a door, like any other in the
palace. He pushed the door open, and there, in loving embrace, were
Sithas and Hermathya. She turned to face him, a smile on her face. A
smile for Sithas.
"No!"
He leaped forward, landing on his hands and knees. His legs were
completely numb. It was pitch dark around him, and for a few seconds
Kith-Kanan didn't know where he was. He breathed deeply. Night must
have fallen, he realized. But the dream had seemed so real! The elf's
senses told him heтАЩd broken some spell, one that had come over him as he
looked at the patterns of light and shadow up in the trees. He must have
been dreaming for hours.
After a long minute waiting for the feeling to return to his legs,
Kith-Kanan cast about for his sword. He found it sticking in the moss. He
freed the weapon and shoved it into its scabbard. A vague sense of
urgency turned him back to the blasted clearing. His last blaze was visible
in the night, but the second to last was almost gone. New bark was
covering the cut he'd made. The next mark was a mere slit, and the one
after that he found only because he remembered the oddly forked trunk of
the ash tree he'd hacked it into. There were no more to find after that. The
cuts had healed.
For a moment the elf prince knew fear. He was lost in the silent forest
at night, hungry, thirsty, and alone. Had enough time passed for the cuts to
heal naturally, or was the grove enchanted? Even the darkness that
surrounded him seemed, well, darker than usual. Not even his elven
eyesight could penetrate very far.
Then the training and education of a prince reasserted itself, banishing
much of the fear. Kith-Kanan, grandson of the great Silvanos, was not
about to be bested on his first night in the wilderness.
He found a dry branch and set about making a torch to light his way
back to the clearing. After gathering a pile of dead leaves for tinder,
Kith-Kanan pulled out his flint and striker. To his surprise, no sparks flew
off the iron bar when he grated the flint against it. He tried and tried, but
all the fire seemed to have gone out of the flint.
There was a flutter of black wings overhead. Kith-Kanan leaped to his
feet in time to see a flock of crows take up perches on a limb just out of
reach. The dozen birds watched him with unnerving intelligence.
"Shoo!" he yelled, flinging a useless branch at them. The crows
flapped up and, when the branch had passed, settled again in the same
place and posture.
He pocketed his flint and striker. The crows followed his movements