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

his the place?" the battlerager asked, shouting so that his gruff voice could be heard over the whipping wind. He had come out of Mithril Hall with Regis and BruenorЧhad forced the halfling to take him out, actuallyЧin search of the body of Artemis Entreri. "Ye find the clues where ye find them," Pwent had said in typically cryptic explanation.
Regis pulled the cowl of his oversized cloak low to ward off the wind's sting. They were in a narrow valley, a gully, the sides of which seemed to focus the considerable wind into a torrent. "It was around here," Regis said, shrugging his shoulders to indicate that he could not be sure. When he had come out to find the battered Entreri, he had taken a higher route, along the top of the ravine and other ledges. He was certain that he was in the general region, but things looked too different from this perspective to be sure.
"We'll find him, me king," Thibbledorf assured Bruenor.
"For what that's worth," the dejected Bruenor grumbled.
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Regis winced at the dwarf's deflated tones. He recognized clearly that Bruenor was slipping back into despair. The dwarves had found no way through the maze of tunnels beneath Mithril Hall, though a thousand were searching, and word from the east was not promisingЧif Catti-brie and Drizzt had gone to Silverymoon, they were long past that place now. Bruenor was coming to realize the futility of it all. Weeks had passed and he had not found a way out of Mithril Hall that would take him anywhere near his friends. The dwarf was losing hope.
"But, me king!" Pwent roared. "He knows the way."
"He's dead," Bruenor reminded the battlerager.
"Not to worry!" bellowed Pwent. "Priests can talk to the deadЧand he might have a map. Oh, we'll find our way to this drow city, I tell ye, and there I'll go, for me king! I'll kill every stinking drowЧexcept that ranger fellow," he added, throwing a wink at Regis, "Чand bring yer girl back home!"
Bruenor just sighed and motioned for Pwent to get on with the hunt. Despite all the complaining, though, the dwarf king privately hoped that he might find some satisfaction in seeing Entreri's broken body.
They moved on for a short while, Regis constantly peeking out from his cowl, trying to get his bearings. Finally, the halfling spotted a high outcropping, a branchlike jag of rock.
"There," he said, pointing the way. "That must be it."
Pwent looked up, then followed a direct line to the ravine's bottom. He began scrambling around on all fours, sniffing the ground as if trying to pick up the corpse's scent.
Regis watched him, amused, then turned to Bruenor, who stood against the gully's wall, his hand on the stone, shaking his head.
"What is it?" Regis asked, walking over. Hearing the question and noticing his king, Pwent scampered to join them.
When he got close, Regis noticed something along the stone wall, something gray and matted. He peered closer as Bruenor pulled a bit of the substance from the stone and held it out.
"What is it?" Regis asked again, daring to touch it. A stringy filament came away with his retracting finger, and it
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took some effort to shake the gooey stuff free.
Bruenor had to swallow hard several times. Pwent ran off, sniffing at the wall, then across the ravine to consider the stone on the other side.
"It's what's left of a web," the dwarf king answered grimly.
Both Bruenor and Regis looked up to the jutting rock and silently considered the implications of a web strung below the falling assassin.
Fingers flashed too quickly for him to follow, conveying some instructions that the assassin did not understand. He shook his head furiously, and the flustered drow clapped his ebon-skinned hands together, uttered, "Ibiith," and walked away.
Ibiith, Artemis Entreri echoed silently in his thoughts. The drow word for offal, it was the word he had heard the most since Jarlaxle had taken him to this wretched place. What could that drow soldier have expected from him? He was only beginning to learn the intricate drow hand code, its finger movements so precise and detailed that Entreri doubted that one in twenty humans could even begin to manage it. And he was trying desperately to learn the drow spoken language as well. He knew a few words and had a basic understanding of drow sentence structure, so he could put simple ideas together.
And he knew the word iblith all too well.
The assassin leaned back against the wall of the small cave, this week's base of operations for Bregan D'aerthe. He felt smaller, more insignificant, than ever. When Jarlaxle had first revived him, in a cave in the ravine outside of Mithril Hall, he had thought the mercenary's offer (actually more of a command, Entreri now realized) to take him to Menzober-ranzan a wonderful thing, a grand adventure.
This was no adventure; this was living hell. Entreri was colnbluth, non-drow, living in the midst of twenty thousand of the less-than-tolerant race. They didn't particularly hate humans, no more than they hated everybody else, but
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because he was colnbluth, non-drow, the once powerful assassin found himself beneath the lowest ranks of Bregan D'aerthe's drow force. No matter what he did, no matter who he killed, in Menzoberranzan, Artemis Entreri could never rank higher than twenty thousand and first.
And the spiders! Entreri hated spiders, and the crawly things were everywhere in the drow city. They were bred into larger, more poisonous varieties, and were kept as pets. And to kill a spider was a crime carrying the punishment of jrmrin quui'elghinn, torture until death. In the great cavern's eastern end, the moss bed and mushroom grove near the lake of Donigarten, where Entreri was often put to work herding goblin slaves, spiders crawled about by the thousands. They crawled around him, crawled on him, hung down in strands, dangling inches from the tormented man's face.
The assassin drew his green-gleaming sword and held its wicked edge before his eyes. At least there was more light now in the city; for some reason that Entreri did not know, magical tights and flickering torches had become much more common in Menzoberranzan.
'It would not be wise to stain so marvelous a weapon with drow blood," came a familiar voice from the doorway, easily speaking the Common tongue. Entreri didn't take his gaze from the blade as Jarlaxle entered the small room.
"You presume that 1 would find the strength to harm one of the mighty drow," the assassin replied. "How cduld I, the iblith, . . ." he started to ask, but Jarlaxle's laughter mocked his self-pity. Entreri glanced over at the mercenary and saw the drow holding his wide-brimmed hat in his hand, fiddling with the diattyma feather.
"I have never underestimated your prowess, assassin," Jarlaxle said. "You have survived several fights against Drizzt Do'Urden, and few in Menzoberranzan will ever make that claim."
"I was his fighting equal," Entreri said through gritted teeth. Simply uttering the words stung him. He had battled Drizzt several times, but only twice had they fought without a premature interruption. On both those occasions, Entreri had lost. Entreri wanted desperately to even the score, to
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prove himself the better fighter. Still, he had to admit, to himself, at least, that in his heart he did not desire another fight with Drizzt. After the first time he had lost to Drizzt, in the muddy sewers and streets of Calimport, Entreri had lived every day plotting revenge, had shaped his life around one event, his rematch with Drizzt. But after his second loss, the one in which he had wound up hanging, broken and miserable, from a jag of rock in a windswept ravine ...
But what? Entreri wondered. Why did he no longer wish to battle that renegade drow? Had the point been proven, the decision rendered? Or was he simply too afraid? The emotions were unsettling to Artemis Entreri, as out of place within him as he was in the city of drow.
"I was his fighting equal," he whispered again, with as much conviction as he could muster.
"I would not state that openly if I were you," the mercenary replied. "Dantrag Baenre and Uthegental Armgo would fight one another simply to determine which of them got to kill you first."
Entreri did not blink; his sword flared, as if reflecting his simmering pride and anger.
Jarlaxle laughed again. 'To determine which would get to fight you first," the mercenary corrected, and he swept a low and apologetic bow.
Still the out-of-place assassin didn't blink. Might he regain a measure of pride by killing one of these legendary drow warriors? he wondered. Or would he lose again, and, worse than being killed, be forced to live with that fact?
Entreri snapped the sword down and slipped it into its scabbard. He had never been so hesitant, so unsure. Even as a young boy, surviving on the brutal streets of Calimshan's crowded cities, Entreri had brimmed with confidence, and had used that confidence to advantage. But not here, not in this place.
"Your soldiers taunt me," he snapped suddenly, transferring his frustration the mercenary's way.
Jarlaxle laughed and put his hat back on his bald head. "Kill a few," he offered, and Entreri couldn't tell if the cold, calculating drow was kidding or not. "The rest will then leave you alone."