Excerpt from The Coming Order
Once upon a time there was a terrible dragon which held a whole countryside in terror, for it devoured the men, and the women, and even the little children. And though many knights went against it, none could slay it. Instead it vanquished all of them, killing some outright, and sending others back to their villages wounded and with a terrible fear in their hearts. And this fear they spread among the others of their village, until all at length believed the dragon to be unconquerable.
Then a child came forward - a girl child. "I will go against the dragon," she said.
The people laughed her to scorn.
"You - a child!" they said, "and a girl child!"
"Still, I will go," said the little girl.
The people sought to dissuade her with ridicule and with serious counsel, but she was a free child, bound to nobody, and she would not be dissuaded. So at length they shrugged their shoulders. "Let her go if she will," they said, and the child went.
She armed herself with no shield or sword, for in her heart was a conviction which she had not cared to tell the villagers. She believed that the power of the dragon was largely illusion, and that it was fear which had destroyed all the knights. Anyway, if the power were real, she knew that in her tiny hands no shield or sword could have any value - only if she were right, and the power were illusion, then she could slay the dragon as well as any knight.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Coming Order (Classic Reprint) (Lucy Re Bartlett)