"Dragonlance - Death Gate Cycle 07 - The Seventh Gate - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

She was ready to give up. Her task seemed futile. Even if she found Alfred alive, what good could he do? He was only one man, after all. A powerful mage, but only one.

Find Alfred! Haplo had told her. But he couldn't know how great the odds were against them. And now Haplo was gone, perhaps dead. And Lord Xar was gone, too.

Her lord, her liege lord. Marit put her hand to her forehead. The sigil he had tattooed on her skin, the sigil that had been a sign of her love and trust, burned with a dull and aching pain. Xar had betrayed her. Worse, it seemed he had betrayed his people.

He was powerful enough to withstand the onslaught of evil beings. His presence would inspire his people, his magic and his cunning give them a chance for victory.

But Xar had turned his back on them . . .

Shaking the wet hair out of her eyes, Marit resolutely put everything out of her mind except the immediate problem. She'd forgotten an important lesson. Never look too far ahead. What you see could be a mirage. Keep your eyes on the trail on the ground.

And there it was. The sign.

Marit cursed herself. She'd been so preoccupied, she had almost missed what she'd been searching for. Kneeling down, she carefully picked up an object, held it out for Hugh the Hand to see.

It was a green, glittering scale. One of several scales Чgreen and goldЧlying on the ground.

Surrounding it were large dollops of fresh blood.

CHAPTER 2

THE LABYRINTH

"ACCORDING TO VASU, THE LAST TIME HE SAW ALFREDЧTHE dragon AlfredЧhe was falling from the skies. Wounded, bleeding." Mark turned the green scale over and over in her hand.

"There were lots of dragons fighting," Hugh protested.

"But the Labyrinth dragons are red-scaled. Not green. No, this has to be Alfred."

"Whatever you say, lady. I don't believe it myself. A man changing himself into a dragon!" He snorted.

"The same man who brought you back from the dead," Marit said crisply. "Let's go."

The trail of bloodЧpitiably easy to followЧled into the forest. Marit found glimmering drops on the grass and splattered on the leaves of the trees. Occasionally she and Hugh were forced to make a detour around some impassable tangle of bramble bushes or thick undergrowth, but they could always pick the trail up easily; too easily. The dragon had lost a lot of blood.

"If the dragon was Alfred, he was flying away from the city," Hugh the Hand observed, crawling over a fallen log. "I wonder why? If he was hurt this badly, you'd think he would have come back to the city for help."

"In the Labyrinth, a mother will often run away from safety to lure the enemy from her child. I think that's what Alfred was doing. That's why he didn't fly toward the city. He was being pursued and so he deliberately led his enemy away from us. Careful. Don't go near that!"

Marit caught hold of Hugh, stopped him from stepping into an innocent-looking tangle of green leaves. "That's a choke vine. It'll tighten around your ankle, cut right through the bone. You won't have a foot left."

"Nice place you've got here, lady," Hugh muttered, falling back. "The damn weed is all over! There's no way around it."

"We'll have to climb." Marit pulled herself up into a tree, began crawling from branch to branch.

Hugh the Hand followed more clumsily and more slowly, his dangling feet barely clearing the choke vine. Its green leaves and tiny white blossoms stirred and rustled beneath him.

Marit pointed grimly to streaks of blood running down the tree trunk. Hugh grunted, said nothing.