"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - MoonShae 3 - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

"I'll save him!" he vowed, blinking again. Already his mind whirled with illusions he could use, perhaps a nest of snakes in her hair, or a great, fat wart, right on herЧ
But he couldn't let them get away. Already the door was closing behind them. Newt sprang into the air, wings humming. But wait! His head was spinning uncontrollably from the effects of the ale. And what was wrong with his wings? Why were they flying him in this direction? And where had that great, looming pillar come fromЧthe one right in front of his nose.
No one in the hall heard the tiny thunk as the dragon crashed, and Newt knew only blackness as he fell lightly to the floor
Once behind the solid oaken door to her room, Robyn began to feel better almost immediately. The sudden queasi-ness passed, and she decided it must have been a combination of excitement and too much food and wine. She lay on her familiar down mattress and dwelled for a moment on her glowing pride in Tristan.
He made a splendid figure of a king! She had always sensed a great destiny before him, but now she began to see it take form. Would that he could end the centuries of strife between northmen and Ffolk! And after that accomplishment, where would he go next?
She hoped, very deeply, that she would be able to share
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that pride and progress with him, that they could have children and grandchildren who would see that legacy live on after them. And with him at her side, she felt confident that they could conquer the evil cleric and his legions in Myrloch Vale.
Suddenly she sat up, thinking of the celebration in the hall below. Her illness had passed. There was no reason she shouldn't go back and enjoy herself. And Tristan had been disappointed, she could tell, when she had left. She felt a twinge of guilt, knowing how important this homecoming was to him. There was no reason why they shouldn't have a night of enjoyment before embarking upon their quest. And she really did enjoy dancing.
She went downstairs and saw with surprise that Tristan was not there. Daryth left the party, too, as soon as he saw her come through the door. She thought he looked angry. Pawldo and Randolph didn't seem to know where the king had gone, though their answers when she questioned them seemed forced.
Perhaps he had been taken ill also. Could they have shared a piece of spoiled food? Concerned, she started back up the stairs. The first thing to do, she decided, was check his room.
Tristan didn't notice the door swing open behind him, but the sudden wash of torchlight broke his concentration. Robyn's voice, as if from a great distance away, reached him.
"Tristan? What's wrong? WhatЧ"
And then he was cold sober as he turned to stare into the druid's shocked face. Robyn slowly lowered the torch, her mouth hanging slack in astonishment. The yellow flames reflected vast depths of pain in her green eyes. He tried to sit, but the tunic betrayed him and he sprawled across the woman, who laughed in delight.
And then the door to the room slammed shut with a force that shook the stones of the castle and sent its echoes reverberating through the long, empty passages of his heart.
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Shapes slipped past overhead, dark green against the purple of the sea. The stream of bodies continued for many minutes, sinuous forms swimming easily through the depths, dark and scaly and silent, always silent. Ysalla stared upward all the while, watching the army gather above her. Her mouth gaped slightly and her forked tongue darted, unnoticed by her, back and forth from her maw.
The force gathered like a cloud in the sea, blocking the scant sunlight that penetrated this far down and surrounding Ysalla with a welcome darkness. The throbbing power of the Deepsong filled the sea around her and brought a fierce joy to her soul.
Below her, along the floor of the vast undersea canyon, another army gathered. This was a plodding, methodical force, lacking the speed and grace of the swimming sahuagin, but it offered its own terrors to any foe.
For the second army was a force made up entirely of death. The shambling corpses, animated by the dark power of her faith, dumbly awaited a command.
Her command.
Ysalla was a cleric of Bhaal, in her own way as powerful as Hobarth. However, while the human Hobarth presided over a domain of air and land and light, Ysalla practiced her craft in the dark, chill regions below the surface of the sea.
As Keeper of the Eggs, she ruled her scaly congregation together with Sythissal, the king. Her priestessesЧyellow, sleek creatures, as opposed to the sturdy green warriors that made up most of her kindЧenforced the will of Bhaal as that will was made known to their mistress.
Now Ysalla and Sythissal had assembled an army more vast than any in the memory of the Deepdwellers. Beside the legions of fierce sahuagin warriors at their command fought the dead of (he seaЧsailors who had drowned in the oceans of the Moonshae and had been animated by the power of Bhaal to serve as mindless servants of evil. And now, too, they had the remnants of the army of the Black Wizard. These troops, humans mostly, but also the dead
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remnants of the Ogre Brigade, marched beside the dead of the sea in answer to Ysalla's command.
And over them all swam the sleek legions of sahuagin, ready to burst forth from the surf to lay waste to the lands of northmen and Ffolk alike. They awaited but the command to march.
Summoned by the thrumming cadence of the Deepsong, the army massed in the city of Kressilacc, deep beneath the narrow realm of men. They huddled among the towers and domes of the vast city on the bottom of the sea, gathering force and ferocity from the song.
Tb the east, they had suffered rebuff and loss against the skill of the new king and the might of the Earthmother. Ysalla sensed that the goddess was not the threat she had been, and the new king was now a hated enemy. The king gave focus to BhaaPs hatred, in a new direction, and so he directed his priestess toward the west.
Tbward Corwell.
Ysalla keened sharply from her temple, high on the canyon wall of Kressilacc, summoning her priestesses to the sword. Sythissal called his legions together, and they started on the march to the west. Propelled by the command of Bhaal, they would march to land and lay waste to all the settlements of man they found there. Northmen or Ffolk, it mattered notЧthe Claws of the Deep would slay regardless.
The god of murder dangled a tempting prize before them. Should they slay the humans along the shore and destroy the ports of Gwynneth, Bhaal would reward them in a way Ysalla could only dream about.
For if they emerged victorious, Bhaal had promised to sink the island. Gwynneth, and the kingdom of Corwell itself, would fall beneath the waves, to become the permanent realm of the sahuagin.
The Earthmother had reigned over the Moonshae Islands far longer than any of the men who had made their homes there. Even the graceful Uewyrr, the elves who had once claimed the islands as their own, had come to a land where
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(he goddess already ruled unchallenged.
In those decades and centuries, she had witnessed the birth of creatures misformed by genetic accident. She had beheld the cruel ravages of disease, often deforming and crippling the animals that roamed her lands. All too often, she had been forced to bear the scars of war, the cruelest of such crimes for it was the most avoidable. Her forests had burned; whole villages had fallen to the sword, or the axe, or the fiery magic of evil sorcery.
But never had she witnessed a greater blasphemy than the Children ofBhaal. Their very existence was a challenge to the balance, and their birth, wrought by the magic of the Darkwell, was a challenge to her soul.
She looked upon all the creatures of the isles as her offspring, and this compounded the outrage. Perhaps her heart bled most bitterly for the fate of the great brown bear. Grunt had been a faithful servant and protector of Genna Moonsinger for a very long time, measured in human terms, and the destruction of the bear and his subsequent perversion into a thing of evil were the cruelest cuts of all.
But all her knowledge, awareness, and outrage slowly faded as her weakness grew. A blackness, the expanding void of death, surrounded her.
And then she knew no more.
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Recoiling in shock and griefЧanger would not come until laterЧRobyn stumbled back to her room. There she took refuge in the Scrolls of Arcanus. Burying herself in these talismans of faith, she sought an answer that did not exist.
A tiny voice cried within her. Why? Why would he betray me thus? And then the plaintive voice vanished beneath the din of cold anger. Her rage swelled inside of her like an unnatural poison, hurting her but also directing a fiery scorn toward the young king who, hours earlier, had claimed her love.
Robyn's door thumped beneath a persistent pounding, and she vaguely realized that Tristan stood without, calling her name. She made no reply, and after a while he went away, allowing her to return to the scrolls.
Each was a sheet of frail parchment, inscribed at the top with a stylized rune depicting a blossoming rose within the circle of a blazing sun. The parchment curled of its own will, shaped by long storage within the tube. Each was covered with strange runes, symbols Robyn had never seen before.
All of the scrolls bore a similar border, inscribed in green ink faded to a dull brown. Delicate tracings outlined the thorny stems of roses, framing each page. The stems encircled a vivid image of the sun in each corner, then came together in an involved depiction of the rose blossom itself at the top center of the parchment.
The druid dropped her eyes to the writing on the page. The runes seemed to dance and waver before her gaze. Her
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