"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

"What are you trying to do?" demanded Pawldo incredulously. "Let's make a run for it!" The diminutive con man had been a friend of the Prince of Corwell's for even longer than Daryth, and he now took it upon himself to protect the young king from the influences of others of a similar moral caliber.
"I hope you know what you're doing," grumbled Dansforth. "My men will stand by to repel boarders, but the crew of that one ship alone outnumbers us two to one!"
Robyn did not turn to look at the captain. "They'll not get near enough to throw a line."
Still skeptical, the captain turned to his crew while Daryth, Tristan, and Pawldo stood protectively around the druid. She closed her eyes in concentration and calmly caressed the smooth wood of her staff. The others held their swords ready. Tristan's own blade gleamed in his hand. The legendary Sword of Cymrych Hugh was a symbol of the ancient glory of the Ffolk. The fact that THstan had discovered the potent blade after it had been missing for centuries explained to a great extent why the lords of Calli-dyrr had been so willing to extend to him the kingship.
The longships raced toward them with startling rapidity. One came head-on, closing rapidly. The other tried to veer in from downwind, battling the gusts to close with her intended victim. Soon they could make out ranks of axe-wielding northmen standing along the hulls, ready to leap into the Defiant. Others stood ready with lines and grapples, though the closing speed of the two vessels would
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make a grappling attempt risky at best.
The nearest longship veered slightly from their path, a hundred yards away, seventy, forty, closing fast. Robyn held her staff over her head, spreading her hands as far apart as she could. She clenched her hands and strained, as if trying to bend the stout shaft, silently mouthing a prayer to her deity, the goddess Earthmother.
An inhuman creaking assailed their ears as the longship suddenly lurched and twisted in the water. Nails flew through the air as the sleek hull bent tortuously. Boards snapped, the mast crumpled, and then came a harsh snap, like the breaking of a bone.
Suddenly the longship buckled, her keel torn in two. Bow and stern rose into the air while the center of the hull filled with foaming brine. The sail billowed gently into the water, belying the violence of the ship's demise, and forty men tumbled into the cold gray sea.
Tristan understood what had happened, though the reality of it stunned him. Robyn's power, the power of the earth, was keyed to all things wild, all creatures of nature. The oak trees that had formed the keel of the raider were such creatures of nature, and the druid had called upon those trees to change their shape, warping them into something different, something that would not support the frame of the long-ship.
He heard a thump on the deck beside him and turned to see Robyn, pallid and motionless, lying on the deck. "What happened?" he cried, kneeling and cradling her head in his arms. Her eyes fluttered open, and a look of panic washed across her features.
"I... I fainted! The casting made me weak! WhyЧhow could it do that?" She groaned, but struggled to a sitting position. "I think I'm all right now."
The king sprang to his feet as the Defiant cut through the wreck, and Tristan could see the faces of the northmen who had been dumped so suddenly into the sea. He saw anger and hatred, but not fear. Even the display of ship-killing magic was not enough to quail the hearts of these fierce warriors.
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Suddenly he saw a norihman's eyes widen in terror. The man's mouth opened to scream, but he disappeared under the water before a sound could emerge. Another, and another of the raiders vanished with a desperate thrashing. Now the remaining men began to scream loudly, in mind-numbing panic. The gray sea turned green with the thrashing of scaly bodies, and red froth exploded from the torn shapes of sailors.
Tristan saw the other longship heel toward them and then suddenly lurch off course. Her sides became a seething mass of green scales as reptilian creatures climbed from the water over the smooth planks, to fall upon the crew with sharp teeth and wicked, slashing claws.
"Sahuagin!" gasped the king, recognizing the savage fish-men they had battled upon Callidyrr.
And then it was the Defiants turn to slow in the water as the attackers grabbed her hull as well. Tristan saw a fishiike head, bristling with spines above a snarling nightmare of a face, and he stabbed instinctively. The creature fell back into the water, but two more took its place. Their humanlike hands, tipped with sharp claws and webbed between the fingers, grasped the hull as they pulled themselves upward. Tristan stared into their blank, emotionless eyes. He saw the bracelets of silver and gold, the cruel tridents, spears, and daggers tucked into metal belts. The monsters tumbled onto the deck all around him as Dansforth's crew put up their weapons against this new assault.
The humans took sword and axe and crossbow and faced attack from the Claws of the Deep. These creatures, the sahuagin, they knew to be cruel and implacable foes. Still the fish-men rose from the sea, striking at the two ships while their brethren dealt a bloody end to the northmen still bobbing among the wreckage of the third. *****
The Darkwell grew even blacker with each killing. Hobarth sat and studied the pool, praying and meditating. He had seen a panther and an owl obliterated in the last day, joining the bear, eagle, and stag in giving their lifespark to
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Bhaal. Somehow, the god summoned these wretched creatures from the surrounding wasteland. Hobarth did not know why.
The fat cleric studied well the word of his god, and slowly he began to sense Bhaal's plan. At least, he began to understand his own substantial role in that plan.
He looked to Genna Moonsinger, sitting upon one of the crosspieces that had fallen from the ruined druidic arches around the Moonwell. She stared listlessly off into space, as if awaiting a command. The fat cleric wondered at the druid's docility.
She looked like the same implacable enemy he had faced a short month ago. The statue had become a being of flesh and blood when he pressed the Heart of Kazgoroth into it. She looked, sounded, and moved like the Great Druid of Gwynneth. Even the bear, Grunt, had been taken in.
But now she was unquestioningly obedient to the commands of Bhaal, and thus Hobarth. For several days, this had been but a pleasant diversion for Hobarth. He had not been with a woman in months, and so he had taken advantage of her willingness to follow his orders. Though she displayed no revulsion, neither did she exhibit any other emotion. Hobarth had eventually realized that her lack of passion turned the whole experience into rather a bore.
Then he commanded her to use her magic, wondering if that potent weapon had been lost upon her perversion to the will of Bhaal. The cleric was delighted when she called forth an inferno of fire from the ground itself, surrounding them with greedy flames. However, he noted a difference from her previous castings of the firewall. Now, as the flames licked across the ground, they left the earth tortured, blackened, and barren in their wake, whereas before the spell had made no mark whatsoever upon the land. This spell fascinated Hobarth particularly, for it was one that no cleric could perform. She had used it to telling effect when he had sent his army of undead against her, and now it was his to command!
Yet, if her body and mind remained that of the Great Druid, her soul was unquestionably altered. The heart beat-
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ing within her breast was no longer her own. It was the foul organ of a black beast of chaos, and this was the thing that held her now in its thrall.
The difference was visible mainly in her eyes. Where once they had sparkled with vitality and wisdom, they now glowered darkly. At times, Hobarth imagined he saw a flash of red fire within them, not unlike the gaze of Kazgoroth itself. And her lack of emotion reminded him more of the zombies he had once commanded than of any human being he had known.
Now, knowing the will of Bhaal, he approached her.
"Druid!" he barked, and she looked dully at him. He realized that he had forgotten to order her to clothe herself after his latest indulgence. "Don your garments."
He waited as she pulled her tattered cloak about her, watching with interest. Though she was well along in years, her body had not succumbed to the flab of middle age. She was stout, but her flesh had a firmness that he found strangely attractive. Shrugging, he told himself that it was merely the lack of any younger woman that caused him to desire her.
"Bhaal has spoken. You are to go to Caer Corwell. There you will perform a certain task he has planned for you. Upon its completion, you will return here."
As he told her the plan, as Bhaal had told it to him, he watched her for some sign of reaction. After all, he was asking her to betray the land and the people she had striven all her life to protect. Hers was not a mission of attack, but something far more insidious. Bhaal faced two powerful-human enemies on the island of Gwynneth. These humans were closely allied to each other. The mission of Genna Moonsinger, simply, was to drive these two allies apart.
"I understand."
"And you will obey?"
"I shall obey."
Claws raked Robyn's calf as she slipped on the blood-slick deck. She whirled toward the sahuagin that had seized her,
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cracking her staff sharply against its spiny head. The creature dropped like a stone, its skull crushed. Forked tongues flicking from between rows of razor-sharp teeth, others scrambled across the deck as the Defiant heeled sideways. Robyn lurched against the rail, still dizzy and unbalanced, but the faintness seemed to be fading.
Tristan slashed at a fish-man. The Sword of Cymrych Hugh sliced through the air, and as easily through the flesh of its victim. The sahuagin leaped backward, clutching the stump of its arm. It opened its mouth wide, showing hundreds of teeth in the gaping maw, and then hissed its hatred.
The king leaped forward, and the monster dove cleanly into the sea. Tristan stopped at the rail and stabbed another creature just as it tried to scramble over the gunwale into the boat. It fell back into the water, dead, and he looked about the deck. He saw Daryth behead one of the monsters as it lunged toward Robyn's back, and Pawldo's keen dagger disemboweled another as the nimble halfling ducked beneath the monster's grasping claws.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the killing ended. The bodies of a score of sahuagin, and several sailors, lay in chaotic disorder across the deck. Red human blood, and the pinkish froth from sahuagin veins, mingled on the planks.