"Karen Wehrstein - Chevenga 01 - Lion's Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wehrstein Karen)

not. I see I must now.

"I could never choose your ways any more than I could think your
thoughts. You will choose whether to stay in this valley or go somewhere
else, to remain Athyel or take up some church, to retain your customs of
being the other and of voting or return to your previous ways. Yet there is
one choice I did dearly wish to deny you forever, pretending to myself in
my foolishness that this peaceful garden in which we live was the whole
world. There was one thing I hid from you. You must choose what has
always been the hardest choice. It's in the chest where I keep my things, at
the very bottom."

In the box they found a sword.

The sight brought back a thousand things to those who had fled Iyesi:
the iron-armored warriors of Jopal, houses falling in flame, the cries of the
dying, the smell of smoke and blood.

"Never did I want you to bear killing tools," Yeola whispered, "and be so
tempted to kill. But someday someone may come wanting to kill you, who
has no ears for your words of justice or sense. Someday having it may save
your lives, which I cannot deny you. You must choose, whether to take it
up or not.

"I ask only this: see what I show you now." Opening the packet she
showed them, they found five books of an age beyond thinking. The pages
were darkened but the writing was visible, and made them start and
shiver in their hearts. A human hand is unsteady, and will err; this writing
was flawless, as could only have been done by the hand of a machine.

"I guessed Jopal would burn your libraries. So I took these, which the
first Athyel collected from the ruins. They knew people would start
doubting it was human-crafted fire that burned the world, for such power
is beyond imagining today; so the proof must be preserved. These were
written when such weapons existed, and speak of them.

"The knowledge to make them is lostтАФbut only for now. Do you know
what the common weapon of war was, 500 years before the Fire?" She
cast her gaze to the sword.

"We won't have this thing!" one cried. "We'll throw it into the deepest
lake we can find I" But another clenched his fists and said, "Are you mad?
Someone will come, just as Yeola said, as Jopal did. If our parents had had
swords, all would have been different!" A quarrel ensued, each side
horrified at the other. "Yeola,' they said finally, "we see this thing's two
edges now, very well."

"You are forgetting something," she said. "This is not a good or evil
thing, for it does not live. It's only a piece of steel. Never can it kill, without
a living hand wielding it, and bare hands can kill without swords. What