"Brooks,.Terry.-.Word03.-.Angel.Fire.East" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

Perhaps the Word sent you to me. A final chance at redemption.

No one sent me, Ross thinks, but does not speak the words.

You will wake in the present and go on. I will die here. You will have
a chance to make a difference still. I will not.

No one sent me, Ross says quickly now, suddenly uneasy.

But the other is not listening. In late fall, three days after
Thanksgiving, once long ago, when I was on the Oregon coast, I
captured a gypsy morph.

His words wheeze from his mouth, coated in the sounds of his
dying. But as he speaks, his voice seems to gain intensity.

It is my greatest regret, that I found it, so rare, so precious, made it
my own, and could not solve the mystery of its magic. The chance
of a lifetime, and I let it slip away.

The man on the cross goes silent then, gasping slowly for breath,
fighting to stay alive just a few moments longer, broken and
shattered within and without, left in his final moments to
contemplate the failures he perceives are his. Eyes reappear in the
shadows of the burned-out church and blighted orchard, the
feeders beginning to gather in anticipation. Ross can scorch the
earth with their gnarled bodies, can strew their cunning eyes like
leaves in the wind, but it will all be pointless. The feeders are a part
of life, of the natural order of things, and you might as well decide
there is no place for humans either, for it is the humans who draw
the feeders and sustain them.

The Knight of the Word who hangs from the cross is speaking
again, telling him of the gypsy morph, of how and when and where
it will be found, of the chance Ross might have of finding it again.
He is giving Ross the details, preparing him for the hunt, thinking to
give another the precious opportunity that he has lost. But he is
giving Ross the chance to fail as well, and it is on that alone his
listener settles in black contemplation.

Do this for me if you can, the man whispers, his voice beginning to
fail him completely, drying up with the draining away of his life,
turning parched and sandy in his throat. Do it for your self.

Ross feels the implications of the stricken Knigh t' s charge razor
through him. If he undertakes so grave and important a mission, if
he embraces so difficult a cause, it may be his own undoing.

Yet, how can he do otherwise?