"Mary Kirchoff, Douglas Niles. Flint, the King ("Dragonlance Preludes II" #2) (angl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

upon the White-rage River. Flint crossed the rushing stream
on a high suspension bridge that reminded him of the village
in the vallenwoods, and made camp on the eastern bank in
the shelter of two red maples. The next day he followed the
bank of the White-rage until he reached the Southway
Road.
For a little more than one joyously uneventful week of
nearly perfect blue skies, Flint advanced down the
Southway Road, which formed the eastern fringes of
Qualinesti, avoiding the rare habitations of the elves. On
the morning of the eighth day he left the Southway Road,
since it continued southwest to the ancient fortress of Pax
Tharkas, and Hillhome lay to the southeast.
He blazed his own trail through the hillcountry, the thick
forests and foothills east of that settlement. Here the vast
slopes of dark fir trees surrounded barren chunks of sharp
granite. A land of steep gorges and winding valleys, the hills
did not achieve the height of true mountains, but their cha-

otic nature made the trail as rugged as any snowswept al-
pine ridge.
This was hill dwarf country, Flint's homeland, and the
rough ground was like a smooth path under his feet. He
spent the ninth night, a rainy one, in an isolated, warm, and
nearly empty dwarven inn in the Hills of Blood, where he
rinsed the dusty trail from his body and whetted his appetite
for his impending reunion with his dwarven clan.
His mind lingered less on the rumors of mountain
dwarves in Hillhome and more on memories of the village:
the cozy stone houses lining the broad main street; the sheep
and goats in the surrounding sloping fields; Delwar's forge,
where Flint had first seen the shaping of metal by fire. He re-
called the sense of safety and security that always seemed to
linger like smoke around the kitchen hearth of his mother's
home. And the scent of the thick-crusted, fresh-baked rolls
he and his father would purchase each morning from Frawl
Quartzen's bakery after the cows had been tended. They
were good memories....
Late in the cold afternoon of the eleventh day, Flint's trip
was lengthened by a detour around the Plains of Dergoth.
Prior to the Cataclysm nearly three hundred fifty years be-
fore, the plains held many water holes. When the Kingpriest
of Istar brought the anger of the gods down upon Krynn,
the face of the world was changed, and the land south of Pax
Tharkas turned to desert. One hundred years later, during
the Dwarfgate Wars - which were an attempt by the hill
dwarves and their human allies to retake Thorbardin after
the Great Betrayal - the magical fortress of Zhaman col-
lapsed in the Plains under a powerful spell and formed the
hideous skull-shaped mound known afterward as Skullcap.