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

beyond. She did not kiss him or touch him in parting. She simply
left, because that was all she knew to do.

The King of the Silver River turned away. His efforts had
wearied him, had drained him of his magic. He needed time to
rest. Quickly he shed his human image, stripping away the false
covering of skin and bones, washing himself clean of its mem-
ories and sensations, and reverting to the faerie creature he was.

Even so, what he felt for Quickening, his daughter, the child
of his making, stayed with him.

II

) alker Boh came awake with a shudder.




WDark Uncle.

The whisper of a voice in his mind jerked
him back from the edge of the black pool into which he was
sliding, pulled him from the inky dark into the gray fringes of
the light, and he started so violently that the muscles of his legs
cramped. His head snapped up from the pillow of his arm, his
eyes slipped open, and he stared blankly ahead. There was pain
all through his body, endless waves of it. The pain wracked him
as if he had been touched by a hot iron, and he curled tightly
into himself in a futile effort to ease it. Only his right arm re-
mained outstretched, a heavy and cumbersome thing that no
longer belonged to him, fastened forever to the floor of the
cavern on which he lay, turned to stone to the elbow.

The source of the pain was there.

He closed his eyes against it, willing it to disperse, to disap-
pear. But he lacked the strength to command it, his magic al-
most gone, dissipated by his struggle to resist the advancing
poison of the Asphinx. It was seven days now since he had come
into the Hall of Kings in search of the Black Elfstone, seven
days since he had found instead the deadly creature that had
been placed there to snare him.

Oh, yes, he thought feverishly. Definitely to snare him.

But by whom? By the Shadowen or by someone else? Who
now had possession of the Black Elfstone?

He recalled in despair the events that had brought him to this