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

Across the vine-patch, Marit slid back down to the ground. She scratched at her skin. The sigla had begun to itch and glow faintly, warning her of danger. Apparently, not all their enemies had rushed to do battle at the Final Gate. She pushed forward with greater urgency, greater caution.

Emerging from a dense thicket, she stepped suddenly and unexpectedly into a cleared space.

"Would you look at this!" Hugh the Hand gave a low whistle.

Marit stared, amazed.

A wide swath of destruction had been cut into the forest. Small trees lay broken on the ground. Their limbs, snapped and twisted, hung from scarred trunks.

The undergrowth had been flattened into the mud. The ground was littered with twigs and leaves. Green and golden scales were scattered around, sparkling like jewels in the gray dawn.

Some enormous green-scaled body had fallen from the sky, crashed down among the trees. Alfred, without doubt.

Yet where was he now?

"Could something have carriedЧ" Marit began.

"Hsst!" Hugh the Hand emphasized his warning with a crushing grip on her wrist, dragged her down into the underbrush.

Marit crouched, held perfectly still. She strained to hear whatever sound had caught the Hand's attention.

The silence of the forest was broken now and again by the fall of a branch, but she heard nothing else. Quiet. Too damn quiet. She looked at Hugh question-ingly.

"Voices!" He leaned over, whispered into her ear. "I swear I heard something that could have been a voice. It stopped talking when you spoke."

Marit nodded. She hadn't been talking all that loudly. Whatever it was must be close, with sharp hearing.

Patience. She counseled herself to keep still, wait for whatever was out there to reveal itself. Hardly breathing, she and Hugh waited and listened.

They heard the voice then. It spoke with a grating sound, horrible to hear, as if jagged edges of broken bones were grinding against each other. Marit shuddered and even Hugh the Hand blenched. His face twisted in revulsion.

"What theЧ"

"A dragon!" Marit whispered, cold with dread.

That was why Alfred hadn't flown back to the city.

He was being pursued, probably attacked, by the most fearsome creature in the Labyrinth.

The runes on her body glowed. She fought the impulse to turn and flee.

One of the laws of the Labyrinth: never fight a red dragon unless it has you cornered and escape is impossible. Then you fight only to force the dragon to kill you swiftly.

"What's it talking about?" Hugh asked. "Can you understand?"

Marit nodded, sickened.

The dragon was speaking the Patryn language. Marit translated for Hugh's benefit.