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

brought the First Fire, and will bring the Second, is not weapons or
knowledge, but choices made in error. Remember that."

They swore they would, and Yeola died.

Once again they wept and clung together, and found strength; once
again they felt a sunset, and a dawn.

They buried her beside the lake, and then all bathed naked in the clear
water, to cleanse themselves. Later she became known as Saint, for having
been divine in her humanity, and Mother, for having been mother in spirit
to a people. Her sword, serving as a sign to all and belonging to no one,
now hangs in the School of the Sword. In her honor, the people named the
valley in which they lived Yeola-e.


I
Vae Arahi, Spring Y. 1554

Two days after I was born my parents carried me up Hetharin, with the
two monks of Senahera to bear witness.

It was a fell day like ones I remember: the land lies sweet as after the
act of love, the scent of ripened crops fills the mountain air, and in the sun
the lowland trees at the peak of their fall-turning seem on fire. Along the
path that follows the meltwater stream from Hetharin, they climbed with
me to the naked heights, to where the air carries so little life one must
breathe hard to draw it in, and nothing grows but lichen and flowers
smaller than one's fingernail. It seems a place little worth the climb, until
one turns around.

Assembly Palace lies small as a lidless jewel box, pale and shining in the
sun, far below one's feet. Vae Arahi is a handful of gravel strewn in a
circle, the School of the Sword a gold tinderbox across the way. Beyond
the lip of the valley mouth the lake shows plainly its reputed shape, that of
a wide scythe, with the city Terera piled about its tip. Only the mountain's
siblings remain large: Haranin at one's face, Saherahin at its shield-side,
Perin to one's own sword-side. Beyond them stand the white-helmeted
peaks no one sees who doesn't make this climb, the shoulders of the nearer
ones forest-green, the farther ones deep steel-blue, and so on, fading into
distance out of mind, till they drop from the rim of this facet of the
Earthsphere. Here one sees, clear as a stroke to the heart, the smallness of
oneself alone, and the greatness of all things as one.

There is no praying for us. We cannot receive comfort from a voice in
the sky. It was for my parents then as it would be for me six years later,
when I entered the School of the Sword to begin my war-training. Asked
did I will this, I signed chalk, yes; I could feel the ability I had been born
with, as people can, and was to my mind obliged to defend my people. I
put my hand on the sword of Saint Mother, as all the masters and novices