juliet2711: переводы

→Reyn watched in admiration as they quickly arranged their bedrolls and set out to look for water and meat. Sometimes they found neither, but as often as not, one of them would bring down a rabbit or a wild goat to share. They all carried hardtack, tea and dried fish, so even when the hunting was scarce they did not go hungry. Spring was upon the land, and at one stopping point, Sedric amazed them all by teaching them to gather dandelion greens and watercress from a stream. So they shared food and a fire and conversation every evening.

→Their camps at night often seemed oddly festive to Reyn. He felt the old man among such youthful Elderlings. They quickly fell back into the routine they had obviously shared before. Every day, as afternoon began to approach evening, the dragons descended, demanding to be rid of riders and harness so they might hunt. Once they had dismounted and the dragons had been launched, the keepers commenced gathering firewood and setting up a camp. The dragons gave little thought to the comfort of the humans they were abandoning for the hunt. The keepers might find themselves in a hillside meadow one afternoon and on a rocky mountain ridge the next.

→‘No. That will just make Kalo angrier with me. He wants me to shout insults at IceFyre. He says he will not dare to attack us, but how can he know?’ After a moment, he added quietly, ‘Thank you all the same.’

→‘I could ask Sestican if you might ride with me,’ Lecter offered, but Davvie had shaken his head.

→‘IceFyre knows he scares me. He overflies us so closely that I can scarcely draw a breath in the wind of his wings. Or he goes very high, and then sweeps in right in front of Kalo, so that he must either dodge or collide with the old bastard. And if I get frightened and beg Kalo to let IceFyre fly where he wishes, Kalo becomes annoyed with me.’

→Instead, he was uncomfortably aware that both IceFyre and Kalo constantly vied for a spot just behind and above Tintaglia. He suspected he knew the significance of that, for several times Tintaglia had caused him to roar with terror as she folded her wings to drop down and then come up behind both of them, or suddenly put on a surge of wing-beats that carried him up so high that he felt he could not breathe. He knew from conversations with Davvie at night that the drakes’ open rivalry for that position terrified him.

→To either side of him, in front of him and behind him, dragons flew, some with riders and harnesses, some bare of any adornment. Despite Rapskal’s posturing in Kelsingra, he and Heeby did not lead the way. Ranculos was out in front most often, though sometimes it was Mercor, and for a time it had been Tintaglia. All the dragons seemed to know whence they were bound, whether from ancient memories or from shared thoughts, he did not know. Reyn had thought that IceFyre, as the eldest dragon and the one hottest for vengeance, would lead the dragons.

→‘Maybe it’s like the dragons. Maybe you don’t tell it what to do. Maybe it needs to be persuaded.’

→‘You remember something?’ Carson asked him, almost sharply.

→The Silver scattered before her touch, ran in erratic circles behind it. For a moment, it smoothed itself into an even sheen over the wood, and then bubbled up again. Harrikin crouched down beside her. ‘May I try?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘With the other glove?’

→Thymara gave him a sharp look. She ran her fingertips across the Silver and wood again. ‘Be flat, be smooth.’

→‘No one told it not to,’ Alum observed.

→Thymara scowled at it. She ran her glove over it again, and again the Silver coated the wood obediently. She stopped and watched it gather itself up into tiny balls like droplets of dew. ‘Why does it do that?’

→‘I knew it couldn’t be that easy,’ Tats muttered.

→All were silent, watching. As she trailed her fingers on the board, the Silver drained from the glove onto the wood until her hand was gloved only in green dragon leather. The Silver was smooth on the wood in the wake of her hand, but only for a moment. Then it began to gather itself up into tiny balls on top of the plank.

→Slowly, being very careful not to splash, Thymara pushed her right hand into the bucket of Silver. She went no more than fingertip deep and then drew her hands out. For a moment, the Silver clung smoothly. Then it began to pull away from the glove in droplets. She held her hand over the bucket and there was silence as they watched the Silver droplets fall.

→No one had tried to answer. And no one had touched the bucket since, but still the stuff moved, coiling within itself, silver, white, grey, a fine thread of black, moving like liquid snakes tangled with one another.

→‘Is it possible it’s actually alive?’ Tats had asked.

→The Silver in the wooden bucket swirled sluggishly. No one had jostled it. It had not ceased its restless motion since Carson had slowly lowered the bucket into the stuff, poked it with a long stick to make it tip, and then gingerly hauled it up again. He had held it by a length of dry rope to allow every droplet of Silver to drip back into the well before setting it beside the well mouth on the paving stones. They had all gathered around it, to watch the slow undulation of the liquid within.

→Sedric found his voice. His words were soft. ‘You’re right, Hest. I was ready. Ready for you, or any other predator. Just as naïve as Davvie.’