"Chalker, Jack L - Rings 1 - Lords Of The Middle Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

He settled back and decided to get some sleep before attempting any real move
back down to his own domains below. He was quite tired, and the warmth of the
air beguiled him into rest, but he did not sleep easily. He dreamed, and the
dream was a terrible one.
He was standing in the pit, looking up at the far-off opening above. The faces
were there, but they were no longer dead faces but living things, eyes opened,
looking down at him with mixed amusement and contempt.
He tried to look away and found himself deep in skeletons. He backed off in
horror but found his feet tangled in ropes -- his own and those of the dead -- and
fell with a crash onto the grate, coming face to face with grinning skulls.
Skeletal hands on skeletal arms seemed to reach out for him. He yelled and
somehow pushed them away, then got up against a side wall.
He looked across and saw the inlaid panel clearly now. The same five designs as
were on the floor, but clear, with strange symbols that looked very much like
the cave and rock drawings done by some of his own people. Inside each circle
there seemed to be a small black square, as if a single tile had been removed.
The faces above now seemed to whisper to him with such force that they stirred
up a great wind. They were not speaking his language, yet he somehow understood
what they were saying.
"The rings... The rings... The five gold rings," they whispered to him. "Do you
have the rings?"
"What rings are these?" he heard himself shouting. "I know of no rings!"
"He doesn't have the rings," one of the male figures whispered, and the other
male faces took it up. "No rings. No rings. He comes without the rings."
"No fruit, no birds, no rings," the female faces chimed in.
"Then why do you come?" the male faces asked him.
"I come only to see what is here, to know why this mountain exists on my
people's sacred land! 1 wish nothing else!"
There was a collective sigh from the faces. "We're sorry," they all responded,
their voices echoing eerily around the pit. "We're so very sorry. But, you see,
reconnaissance is not allowed."
And then the skeletons, those remains of the ones who have come before, stirred,
and they seemed to come together and reach out for him, to make him one of
them...
He awoke with a start, feeling the chilled sweat caused by the dream. The wind
was up, and it seemed to be getting colder. The queer cloud cap above whirled at
impossible speed, and the one below seemed to match it. He got hurriedly to his
feet, not really thinking of anything but getting out of this place, getting
away. It was neither cowardice nor a loss of honor to leave; this was beyond his
power, an evil place of magic that would take far more than a warrior to combat.
There was no honor in suicide, and that was what it was to remain here.
Although it was growing late in the day and the region below was bound to be
bitterly cold, he did not hesitate to make his way down as far as he could. He
quickly reached the swirling mass of clouds below and entered them, and was
immediately engulfed in a maelstrom.
The winds were so powerful and so loud that they masked his scream as they blew
him off the mountainside, hurling his body hundreds of meters straight down to
the nearest rocks below.