"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - Legacy of the Draw 2 - Starless Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

Catti-brie sighed in the face of her father's scowl. How she longed to see Bruenor smile again! Catti-brie noted the bruise on Bruenor's forehead, the scraped portion finally scabbing over. He had reportedly gone into a tirade a few nights before, and had actually smashed down a heavy wooden door with his head while two frantic younger
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dwarves tried to hold him back. The bruise combined with Bruenor's garish scar, which ran from his forehead to the side of his jaw, across one socket where his eye had once been, made the old dwarf seem battered indeed!
"Where ye going?" Bruenor asked again, angrily.
"Settlestone," the young woman lied, referring to the town of barbarians, Wulfgar's people, down the mountain from Mithril Hall's eastern exit. 'The tribe's building a cairn to honor Wulfgar's memory." Catti-brie was somewhat surprised at how easily the lie came to her; she had always been able to charm Bruenor, often using half-truths and semantic games to get around the blunt truth, but she had never so boldly lied to him.
Reminding herself of the importance behind it all, she looked the red-bearded dwarf in the eye as she continued. "I'm wanting to be there before they start building. If they're to do it, then they're to do it right. Wulfgar deserves no less."
Bruenor's one working eye seemed to mist over, taking on an even duller appearance, and the scarred dwarf turned away from Catti-brie, went back to his pointless fire poking, though he did manage one slight nod of halfhearted agreement. It was no secret in Mithril Hall that Bruenor didn't like talking of WulfgarЧhe had even punched out one priest who insisted that Aegis-fang could not, by dwarvish tradition, be given a place of honor in the Hall of Dumathoin, since a human, and no dwarf, had wielded it.
Catti-brie noticed then that Pwent's armor had ceased its squealing, and she turned about to regard the battlerager. He stood by the opened door, looking forlornly at her and at Bruenor's back. With a nod to the young woman, he quietly (for a rusty-armored battlerager) left the room.
Apparently, Catti-brie was not the only one pained by the pitiful wretch Bruenor Battlehammer had become.
"Ye've got their sympathy," she remarked to Bruenor, who seemed not to hear. "All in Mithril Hall speak kindly of their wounded king."
"Shut yer face," Bruenor said out of the side of his mouth. He still sat squarely facing the low fire.
Catti-brie knew that the implied threat was lame,
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another reminder of Bruenor's fall. In days past, when Bruenor Battlehammer suggested that someone shut his face, he did, or Bruenor did it for him. But, since the fights with the priest and with the door, Bruenor's fire, like the one in the hearth, had played itself to its end.
"Do ye mean to poke that fire the rest o' yer days?" Catti-brie asked, trying to incite a fight, to blow on the embers of Bruenor's pride.
"If it pleases me," the dwarf retaliated too calmly.
Catti-brie sighed again and pointedly hitched her cloak over the side of her hip, revealing the magical mask and Entreri's jeweled dagger. Even though the young woman was determined to undertake her adventure alone, and did not want to explain any of it to Bruenor, she prayed that Bruenor would have life enough within him to notice.
Long minutes passed, quiet minutes, except for the occasional crackle of the embers and the hiss of the unseasoned wood.
"I'll return when I return!" the flustered woman barked, and she headed for the door. Bruenor absently waved her away over one shoulder, never bothering to look at her.
Catti-brie paused by the door, then opened it and quietly closed it, never leaving the room. She waited a few moments, not believing that Bruenor remained in front of the fire, poking it absently. Then she slipped across the room and through another doorway, to the dwarf's bedroom.
Catti-brie moved to Bruenor's large oaken deskЧa gift from Wulfgar's people, its polished wood gleaming and designs of Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer that Bruenor had crafted, carved into its sides. Catti-brie paused a long while, despite her need to be out before Bruenor realized what she was doing, and looked at those designs, remembering Wulfgar. She would never get over that loss. She understood that, but she knew, too, that her time of grieving neared its end, that she had to get on with the business of living. Especially now, Catti-brie reminded herself, with another of her friends apparently walking into peril.
In a stone coffer atop the desk Catti-brie found what she was looking for: a small locket on a silver chain, a gift to
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Bruenor from Alustriel, the Lady of Silverymoon. Bruenor had been thought dead, lost in Mithril Hall on the friends' first passage through the place. He had escaped from the halls sometime later, avoiding the evil gray dwarves who had claimed Mithril Hall as their own, and with Alustriel's help, he found Catti-brie in Longsaddle, a village to the southwest. Drizzt and Wulfgar had left long before that, on their way south in pursuit of Regis, who had been captured by the assassin Entreri.
Alustriel had then given Bruenor the magical locket. Inside was a tiny portrait of Drizzt, and with this device the dwarf could generally track the drow. Proper direction and distance from Drizzt could be determined by the degrees of magical warmth emanating from the locket.
The metal bauble was cool now, colder than the air of the room, and it seemed to Catti-brie that Drizzt was already a long way from her.
Catti-brie opened the locket and regarded the perfect image of her dear drow friend. She wondered if she should take it. With Guenhwyvar she could likely follow Drizzt anyway, if she could get on his trail, and she had kept it in the back of her mind that, when Bruenor learned the truth from Regis, the fire would come into his eyes, and he would rush off in pursuit.
Catti-brie liked that image of fiery Bruenor, wanted her father to come charging in to her aid, and to Drizzt's rescue, but that was a child's hope, she realized, unrealistic and ultimately dangerous.
Catti-brie shut the locket and snapped it up into her hand. She slipped out of Bruenor's bedroom and through his sitting room (with the red-bearded dwarf still seated before the fire, his thoughts a million miles away), then rushed through the halls of the upper levels, knowing that if she didn't get on her way soon, she might lose her nerve.
Outside, she regarded the locket again and knew that in taking it, she had cut off any chances that Bruenor would follow. She was on her own.
That was how it had to be, Catti-brie decided, and she slipped the chain over her head and started down the mountain, hoping to get to Silverymoon not so long after Drizzt.
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He slipped as quietly and unobtrusively as he could along the dark streets of Menzoberranzan, his heat-seeing eyes glowing ruby red. All that he wanted was to get back to Jarlaxle's base, back with the drow who recognized his worth.
"Waela riwil!" came a shrill cry from the side.
He stopped in his tracks, leaned wearily against the pile of broken stone near an unoccupied stalagmite mound. He had heard those words often beforeЧalways those two words, said with obvious derision.
"Waela riwil!" the drow female said again, moving toward him, a russet tentacle rod in one hand, its three eight-foot-long arms writhing of their own accord, eagerly, as though they wanted to lash out with their own maliciousness and slap at him. At least the female wasn't carrying one of those whips of fangs, he mused, thinking of the multi-snake-headed weapons many of the higher-ranking drow priestesses used.
He offered no resistance as she moved to stand right in front of him, respectfully lowered his eyes as Jarlaxle had taught him. He suspected that she, too, was moving through the streets inconspicuouslyЧwhy else would a drow female, powerful enough to be carrying one of those wicked rods, be crawling about the alleys of this, the lesser section of Menzoberranzan?
She issued a string of drow words in her melodic voice, too quickly for this newcomer to understand. He caught the words quarth, which meant command, and harl'il'cik, or kneel, and expected them anyway, for he was always being commanded to kneel.
Down he went, obediently and immediately, though the drop to the hard stone pained his knees.
The drow female paced slowly about him, giving him a long look at her shapely legs, even pulling his head back so that he could stare up into her undeniably beautiful face, while she purred her name, "Jerlys."
She moved as if to kiss him, then slapped him instead, a stinging smack on his cheek. Immediately, his hands went to
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his sword and dirk, but he calmed and reminded himself of the consequences.
Still the drow paced about him, speaking to herself as much as to him. Iblith," she said many times, the drow word for excrement, and finally he replied with the single word "abban," which meant ally, again as Jarlaxle had coached him.
"Abban del darthiir!" she cried back, smacking him again on the back of his head, nearly knocking him flat to his face.