"Dragonlance - Deathgate 3 - Fire Sea - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

The bar is a new addition. The old king frowns at it. Perhaps he is remembering a time, before Edmund was born, when there was no need for a physical barrier. Magic kept the doors shut then. Over the years, however, the magic was needed for other, more important tasksЧsuch as survival.

His son pushes on the doors and they swing open. A blast of cold air blows out the gas lamp. The cold is bitter, fierce, penetrates the fur robes. It reminds the old king that, chill as is the palace, its walls and their magic offer some protection from the blood-freezing, bone-numbing darkness outside.

"Father, are you certain you're up to this?" Edmund asks worriedly.

"Yes," the old man snaps, although my guess is that he wouldn't have gone if he'd been alone. "Don't worry about me. If Baltazar has his way, we'll all be out in this before long."

Yes, he knows I'm near, knows I'm listening. He's jealous of my influence over Edmund. All I can say is, Old man, you had your chance.

"Baltazar has found a route that takes us down through the tunnels, Father. I explained that to you before. The air will grow wanner, the deeper into the world we penetrate."

"Found such a fool notion in a book, I suppose. No use lighting the damn thing," the old king remarks, referring to the lamp. "Don't waste your magic. I don't need a light. Many and many are the times I've stood on this colonnade. I could walk it blindfolded."

I can hear them moving through the darkness. I can almost see the king thrust aside Edmund's proffered armЧthe prince is dutiful and loving to a father who little deserves itЧand stalk unhesitatingly through the doors. I stand in the hallway and try to ignore the cold biting at my face and hands, numbing my feet.

"I don't hold with books," the king remarks bitterly to his son, whose footfalls I can hear, walking at his side. "Baltazar spends far too much time among the books."

Perhaps anger feels good inside the old man, warm and bright, like the fire of the lamp.

"It was the books told us that they were going to return to us and

Fire Sea *9*

look what came of that! Books." The old king snorts. "I don't trust them-1 don't think we should trust them! Maybe they were accurate centuries ago, but the world's changed since then. The routes that brought our ancestors to this realm are probably gone, destroyed."

"Baltazar has explored the tunnels, as far as he dared go, and he found them safe, the maps accurate. Remember, Father, that the tunnels are protected by magic, by the powerful, ancient magic that built them, that built this world."

'Ancient magic!" The old king's anger comes fully to the surface, burns in his voice. "The ancient magic has failed. It was the failure of the ancient magic that brought us to this! Ruin where there was once prosperity. Desolation where there was once plenty. Ice where there was once water. Death where there was once life!"

He stands on the portico of the palace and looks before him. His physical eyes see the darkness that has closed over them, sees it broken only by tiny dots of light burning sporadically here and there about the city. Those dots of light represent his people and there are too few of them, far too few. The vast majority of the houses in the realm of Kairn Telest are dark and cold. Like the queen, those who now remain in the houses can do very well without light and warmth; it isn't wasted on them.

His physical eyes see the darkness, just as his physical body feels the pain of the cold, and he rejects it. He looks at his city through the eyes of memory, a gift he tries to share with his son. Now that it is too late.

"In the ancient world, during the time before the Sundering, they say there was an orb of blazing fire they called a sun. I read this in a book," the old king adds drily. "Baltazar isn't the only one who can read. When the world was sundered into four parts, the sun's fire "was divided among the four new worlds. The fire was placed in the center of our world. That fire is Abarrach's heart, and like the heart, it has tributaries that carry the life's blood of warmth and energy to the body's limbs."

I hear a rustling sound, a head moving among many layers of clothing. I can imagine the king shifting his gaze from the dying city, huddled in darkness, to stare far beyond the city's walls. He can see nothing, the darkness is complete. But, perhaps, in his mind's eye, he sees a land of light and warmth, a land of green and growing things beneath a high cavern ceiling frescoed with glittering stalactites, a land where children played and laughed.

Х 10*

WEIS AND HICKMAN

"Our sun was out there." Another rustling. The old king lifts his hand, points into the eternal darkness.

"The colossus/' Edmund says softly.

He is patient with his father. There is much, so much to be done, and he stands with the old man and listens to his memories.

"Someday his son will do the same for him," I whisper hopefully, but the shadow that lies over our future will not lift from my heart.