"Brooks - Heritage 2 -The Druid of Shannara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

face, stinging his eyes as they mingled with his sweat. His body
twisted with the agony of his choices.
No! No, he would not!
Yet he knew he must.

His crying turned to laughter, chilling in its madness as it
rolled out of him into the emptiness of the tomb. He waited until
it expended itself, the echoes fading into silence, then looked
up again. His possibilities had exhausted themselves; his fate
was sealed. If he did not break free now, he knew he never
would.

And there was only one way to do so.
He hardened himself to the fact of it, walling himself away
from his emotions, drawing from some final reserve the last of
his strength. He cast about the cavern floor until he found what

The Druid of Shannara 11

he needed. It was a rock that was approximately the size and
shape of an axe-blade, jagged on one side, hard enough to have
survived intact its fall from the chamber ceiling where it had
been loosened by the battle four centuries earlier between Al-
lanon and the serpent Valg. The rock lay twenty feet away,
clearly beyond reach of any ordinary man. But not him. He
summoned a fragment of the magic that remained to him, forc-
ing himself to remain steady during its use. The rock inched
forward, scraping as it moved, a slow scratching in the cavern's
silence. Walker grew light-headed from the strain, the fever
burning through him, leaving him nauseated. Yet he kept the
rock moving closer.

At last it was within reach of his free hand. He let the magic
slip away, taking long moments to gather himself. Then he
stretched out his arm to the rock, and his fingers closed tightly
about it. Slowly he gathered it in, finding it impossibly heavy,
so heavy in fact that he was not certain he could manage to lift
it let alone . . .

He could not finish the thought. He could not dwell on what
he was about to do. He dragged the rock over until it was next
to him, braced himself firmly with his knees, took a deep breath,
raised the rock overhead, hesitated for just an instant, then in a
rush of fear and anguish brought it down. It smashed into the
stone of his arm between elbow and wrist, hammering it with
such force that it jarred his entire body. The resulting pain was
so agonizing that it threatened to render him unconscious. He
screamed as waves of it washed through him; he felt as if he
were being torn apart from the inside out. He fell forward, gasp-
ing for breath, and the axe-blade rock dropped from his nerve-