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

Even on this deck.

"Get me up," Chur said, with a move of an aching arm. "O gods, prop this gods-be bed up. I'm a mess."
"That's all right." Geran sat down on the bedside and checked the implanted tubes with a quick glance, bit a hole in the packet she had brought and offered it to Chur. "Take this and you get the bed propped up."
"Unnhhn." The very thought hit her stomach and lay there indigestible. "Prop it first."
"You promise."
"Gods rot you, I'll rip your ears." Geran touched a control and the bed inclined upward. Chur flexed her legs and shifted her weight and grimaced in pain as the arm with the implants shifted down. But Geran, relentless, got an arm behind Chur's head and held the packet where she could drink.
It hit her stomach the way she had feared. "Enough," she said, "enough." And Geran had the sense to quit and just let her lie there drifting a moment, in that place she had discovered where the pain was not so bad. "Where's the shooting?" she asked finally.
"Hey, we ducked out of it."
Chur lay there a moment adding that up and rolled her head over where she could look at her sister, one long stare. "Where'd we duck to? Huh?"
"Kif are about to chew each other to rags about fifteen minutes off. We're headed to station for R & R. Maybe I'll buy you a drink, huh?"
"We take damage?" She recalled a lurch, like the thrust of the mains from the wrong angle . . . impossible to happen. Recalled a long hard acceleration, till the machine put her out cold. "Geran, what's the straight of it?"
"That is the straight of it. We're in one piece, we're going into station while the kif work it out. That's all." Too gods-be cheerful, Geran. Whole lot too cheerful. "Give me the truth," Chur said. "That's a gods-be dumb move. Sit at dock. Who knows what could come in? Huh? What's going on?"
"You want to try something solid?"
"No," she said flatly. And lay there breathing a moment, and turned her face toward Geran's stricken silence. Gods, the pain in Geran's face. "But I have to, don't I?" Her stomach rebelled at the thought. "Bit of soup, maybe. Nothing heavy. Don't push me, huh?"
"Sure," Geran said. Her ears had pricked up at once. Her eyes shone like a grateful child's. "You want the rest of this?"
O gods. Don't let me be sick. "Soup," she said, and clamped her jaws and tried not to think about it. "I rest, huh?"
"You rest," Geran said.
She shut her eyes, turning it all off.
You're still lying, Geran. But she did not have strength to face whatever it was Geran was lying about. She hoped not to discover. Her world limited itself to the pains in her joints and the misery of her arm and her back. The world could be right again if she could keep her stomach quiet and ease the pain a little. She just wanted not to throw up her guts again, and any problem more than that was more than she could carry.
It was impossible not to ask. But in a dim, weary way, with the data that came over the com all muddling in her head and promising nothing good at all, she thanked the gods Geran held back the answers.

"Jik," Pyanfar said.
Jik pushed himself back in his chair and looked at the board in front of him, its screens all dark and dead. And turned his chair then and stared at her across the width of the bridge.
A word was too much. Till she had something to offer him from her side. Time seemed to stretch further and further like the eeriness of jump. And there was no rescue and no way out of the impasse they were in. Him on The Pride's bridge. Aja Jin ignorant and silent beside them.
His allies outbound. Unless by some monumentally unexpected turn the kif all went after their enemies and left them alone.
And none of them believed that.
Down the corridor the lift worked, and opened, and let Haral out. Pyanfar got up and went to the door of the bridge and out it, to intercept her in the hall; and Haral slipped her a couple of pills. "Thanks," she said, "you sure about this stuff."
"This'll make it sure," Haral said, and fished a flask oward so that only a man of wood or stone could have avoided taking notice of them.
The woman who stepped from the passage into the afternoon light of the courtyard bore little resemblance to the Great Druid of Gwynneth. Tall, smooth-skinned, and young, she moved with the supple grace of a cat.
Gliding across the courtyard of Caer Corwell, she slipped among the Ffolk who had begun to gather at the castle in anticipation of the king's homecoming. She had naught to do now but wait for her victim to fall into her trap.
"The children of the goddess were her most potent allies in the struggle against Kazgoroth. The Leviathan of the deep shattered our ships and scattered our fleet, but the power of the Beast slayed the great fish in the end. The Pack pursued the army of the northmen over the land, howling madly with their wolfen voices and tearing flesh with their
DOUGLAS NILES
great fangs when they brought the army to bay."
Hobarth paused in his narration, sensing Bhaal's keen interest in the tale. In truth, the cleric was surprised at how little the god knew about their adversaries.
"But the Pack, too, is gone, scattered to the far corners of the isle. The druid told me her goddess lacks the will, or the might, to summon it again." Genna had indeed provided the cleric with a wealth of information. She apparently retained all the memories of her former life, with none of the spiritual values that would have prevented her from disclosing them to one such as Hobarth.
"Now," he continued, "only the unicorn, Kamerynn, remains of the children. He is strongЧI have faced him myselfЧbut his might is nothing in the face of your own."
Of course, the cleric did not speak out loud. Instead, he formulated the information in his mind, where his god claimed it for his own. This, too, is how Bhaal spoke with his servant.
These children you speak of... the children of a god. The thought of them brings me pleasure.
Hobarth waited, confused.
/, too, shall create childrenЧthe Children of Bhaal. They will stalk the land beside you and bring death to all the corners of the world!
"What form shall they take?" asked the cleric nervously.
His answer came in the form of a bubbling maelstrom forming in the center of the Darkwell. The black water foamed upward, releasing a stench of foul gas into the air. Then the froth moved across the surface as rings of ripples spread outward from the turbulence.
The surface of the water parted in a soft eruption, and a figure emerged. Oily water trickled off a broad, flat head, streaked across a feathered face, dripped from a short, blunt beak. Then the great brown body emerged, lumbering onto the shore and hulking over the cleric. Patches of shaggy hair, in places torn to reveal bare and scabrous skin, covered the creature's lower body. Hobarth looked up at a ghastly apparition, a nightmare thing that did not belong on this world.
DARKWELL
He recognized the shaggy body of Grunt, the bear. The thing stood on its hind legs, twice as tall as a man, in the hunching pose of a great brown bear. But the face dispelled any notions of normalcy. It was flat and covered with feathers, with a short, downward pointing beakЧa beak! It was the head of an owl, grown hugely out of proportion and placed upon the body of the bear.
The words of Bhaal came into the cleric's mind. My owlbear. You shall call him Thorax.
Scarcely did Hobarth have a chance to register his shock, remembering a large owl that had died from the poisonous touch of the waters shortly after the bear's demise, than he saw the water foaming and swirling a second time. This time, a pair of bizarre creatures splashed forth, pulling themselves into the air on the broad wings of eagles. They were followed by several more, and they all flew with the grace and power of that most regal of birds.
But the heads of these hideous things were all like the head of a proud stag. A broad rack of antlers spread above each of them. Only the mouths were unlike deer, as they parted in flight to reveal rows of sharp, wolflike fangs.
Theperytons. Witness the birth of my flock.