"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 01 - Shadow Of All Night Falling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)
The dogs and cats were gone, as were the horses of the King's cavalry and the animals of the Royal Zoo. Rumors fogged the air. Children had disappeared. Men in good health were fearful they would be accused of cannibalism.
Sometimes those who had fallen to disease were found with flesh torn away, perhaps by rats, perhaps not.
The siege progressed. One day a horseman came from the encircling camps, a grim young man, frightened of the city and the sorceries within-sorceries held at bay solely by the skill of one lone man trained by the mysterious Tervola and Princes Thaumaturge of Shinsan. He delivered a scroll. Someone observed that it came on the date of anniversary for previous messages. It restated Varthlokkur's prior demands, with one significant addition: appended was a list of names of persons to be sent out of the city, and before whom the King was to abase himself.
Vilis had become more amenable. Five days later there was activity on the city walls. The Kings and generals of the rebels, dressed in black, on black horses, with black banners flying, advanced upon the city, stopped just beyond bowshot.
As the sun reached zenith, seven groups of seven tall poles were raised atop the wall. To each was bound, soaked in naptha, a Master Wizard. The King himself bore the torches that lighted the fires. There was a long period of silence. No cloud marked the sky. All things of earth seemed poised, waiting, uncertain. Then smoke wisped toward the watchers. The stench of burning flesh distressed their horses.
The Silent One betrayed no emotion. His victory was not yet complete.
Once the fires finished their work, the gate opened, and emaciated, wretched people stumbled out. In full view, the King knelt and kissed their dusty feet as they passed. They were few, all who remained of those who once had lent aid to, or had given kindness to, an unhappy orphan. One was a man in tattered executioner's black, another was an aged sergeant. There were priests, a handful of minor sorcerers, and a few withered prostitutes who had once provided a little mothering.
The gates closed. Varthlokkur waited. The sun moved west. He sent a rider. "Where is the third penance?" the rider demanded.
"You've taken all I can give," King Vilis replied. "My power and my Empire are dust. That is cruelty enough!" He seized a bow, shot at the messenger, missed.
"Then all Ilkazar will die!" The rider fled.
Varthlokkur sat silently for a long time, considering. He had made promises he had hoped needn't be kept. He didn't want anyone but Vilis. But there were Kings accompanying him who depended on his word.
Those Kings waited. The city waited. Varthlokkur reached his decision. He raised his right arm, his left, and invoked that which he had kept in waiting, the power no accidental sorcerer ever had mastered. So imperceptibly that only the horses noticed at first, the earth began shaking. The Kings were awed by Varthlokkur's Power. An earth-marid, a King of earth-elementals, reputedly unmanageable save by supreme masters of the eastern sorcery, was answering his summons.
The trembling grew to an earthquake. The city gates collapsed. The poles with wizards toppled from the walls. Spires and minarets shuddered. And the shaking grew. Great buildings fell. The thick wall, Ilkazar's most solid construction, began to crumble. Varthlokkur's arms ached with the effort of holding them upward, motionless, and with the Power flowing through them. Yet he held them high. If they fell prematurely, the earth-marid would abandon work as yet incomplete, and Ilkazar would retain sufficient might to make the assault terribly costly. Fires appeared and spread. Dust from falling buildings joined their smoke, darkened the sky. A great government building slid into the Aeos (which entered Ilkazar through a huge, unbreachable grill), damming it, flooding part of the city.
Varthlokkur eventually ,was satisfied and allowed the earthquake to die. He loosed his human hounds. The warriors met little opposition. He himself led the Kings to the Palace.
They found Vilis seated amidst the ruins of his citadel, rocking and drooling. He clutched a crown to his chest and sang a childhood song. Soldiers hastily cleared rubble from a corner of Execution Square. They recovered a carven stake, set it up, and bound the King to it. Brands arrived. Varthlokkur stood before Vilis, torch in hand.
His followers expected him to laugh, or brag about this fulfillment of vengeance, but he did not. They expected he would now speak, for the first time in decades, and say something like, "Remember my mother in Hell," but he did not. When at last he broke the long silence, he said only, "You have made me lonely, Royal Ilkazar," and cast the torch aside. Head bowed, he turned and walked from the city slowly, leaving mercy or its lack to his followers.
The poet, hardly impartial, ends with a bitter curse upon Ilkazar, damning her for all eternity. But, before he finishes, he does, briefly, indicate that he understands why Varthlokkur cast the torch aside. No one else then present, and few scholars since, did so. The destruction of Ilkazar and its King meant Varthlokkur had lost his only true companion of fourteen years' purpose. Behind the mask of victory had lain a defeat.
FIVE: By Every Hand Betrayed
Night in Iwa Skolovda, at the end of a savage storm-probably the last of winter. The Kratchnodian Mountains and the valley of the Silverbind were buried by sparkling snow, and temperatures were barely above melting. The Silverbind was high in the flatlands, a foot below flood outside the east wall. Ice jammed the river a few miles down, backing the flow. The wind sang a lonely dirge around the Tower of the Moon. It was a night for earthshaking events, a night for the Wind of Fate.
Nepanthe had slept better since the arrival of the fat man. He hadn't been able to banish the demons of her mind, but he had tamed them a bit. That night, however, she paced, though not from old terror. A premonition rode the wind whispering through the windows and curtains. Apprehension forbid all sleep. Occasionally the future touched her lightly, though seldom clearly. Something was terribly wrong in Iwa Skolovda. She had felt it for hours, yet could not discover what.
Glancing out the window facing north, she finally found a visible wrongness. The sky glowed away toward the north wall. The glow steadily brightened. She knew what it was. Fire. But what flames they must be! To cause such a widespread glow, the fire must be beyond all control. Her apprehension increased. She turned to the clothing set out for the morning.
She had just finished dressing-and was cursing a broken fingernail-when the knocker at her door sounded.
"Enter!" she called, certain she sounded terrified.
Rolf came in, face grim.
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