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

loudly proclaimed that the old gods had abandoned Krynn.
They sought new gods, and sometime during the three cen-
turies since, the seekers claimed to have found those gods.
Many of the folk of Abanasinia had turned toward the flick-
ering promise of the seekers' religion. Flint, and many oth-
ers of a more pragmatic nature, saw the seekers' doctrine for
the hollow bunk that it was.
They could be recognized by their brown and golden
robes, these seeker missionaries who rode about the plains
collecting steel coins for their coffers. Most of them at the
missionary level were the young, bored malcontents who
grew up in every town. The promise of money and power, if
only over people desperate for a sign that gods existed,
seemed to lure these spiritual bullies like a magnet. They
were molded into persuasive salesmen by an intensive
"training" session in the seeker capitol of nearby Haven, and
they claimed to have converted thousands to their cause.
The seekers were as close as anything to the governing
body of the plains. A body with muscle, of course: seeker
followers were equally divided between the zealous acolytes
who taught the words and ways of the new gods, and the
men-at-arms who garrisoned the towns for no discernible
purpose.
Unfortunately, groused the dwarf to himself, their con-
cept of governing seems to involve little more than mooch-
ing off the towns and villages unlucky enough to host their
temples and guardposts.

Flint's mood dipped even farther when he noticed a group
of seekers hovering around the doorway to Jessab the
Greengrocer's. He recognized this bunch as rude, belliger-
ent, over-postulating phonies who couldn't cure a split fin-
ger any more than they could speak with their so-called
gods. In one of the few times Flint had ventured from his
home in the last month, he had come upon a villager chok-
ing on a bite of meat. This very group had been summoned
to help, and after much desperate prodding from the small,
gathered crowd, the leader of the three, a pimply young
whelp, had sighed and gesticulated uselessly above his head
as if casting a clerical spell. No miracle appeared. The vil-
lager had gasped his last before the other two could try to
help him. The three had shrugged in unison and then headed
into the nearest inn, unconcerned.
Flint could feel his face tighten with anger now as he con-
sidered the cluster around the doorway. Novices, he noted,
from their coarse white robes edged with embroidered hem-
lock vine and the all-too-familiar emblem of a lighted torch
on the left breast.
"Who are you staring at, little man?" one of them de-
manded, his arms crossed insolently.