"Dragonlance - Deathgate 5 - The Hand Of Chaos - uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

FOUR REALMS

I AM CALLED HAPLO.

My name means single, alone. It was given to me by my parents as a sort of prophecy, for they knew they would not survive the prison into which my people, the Patryns, had been castЧthe prison of dark and terrible magics known as the Labyrinth.

I became a RunnerЧone who fights the Labyrinth. I was one of the lucky ones I made it through the Final Gate, though I very nearly perished in the attempt. If it had not been for this sausage-stealing dog who sits here beside me, I would not be here, penning this account. The dog gave me the will to live when I would have given up and died. He saved my life.

The dog gave me the will to live, but my lord Xar gave me a reason to live, a purpose.

Xar was the first Patryn to escape the Labyrinth. He is old and powerful, highly skilled in the rune-magic that gives both the Patryns and our enemies, the Sartan, our strength. Xar escaped the Labyrinth, then immediately went back into it. No other has ever had the courage to do so, and even now he risks his life daily to rescue us.

Many of us have emerged from the Labyrinth. We live in the Nexus, which we have made into a beautiful city. But have we been rehabilitated as our captors had intended?

An impatient people, we learned patience in that hard school. A selfish people, we learned self-sacrifice, loyalty. Above all, we learned to hate.

x WEIS AND H1CKMAN

It is my lord Xar's goalЧour goalЧto take back the world that was snatched from us, to rule it as we were always meant to rule, and to inflict dire punishment on our enemies.

The realms used to be but one world, one beautiful green-blue world. It belonged to us and the Sartan, for our rune-magic made us powerful. The other, lesser races, whom we call menschЧthe humans, elves, and dwarvesЧworshiped us as gods.

But the Sartan thought we Patryns were gaming too much control. The balance of power started to shift in our favor. Furious, the Sartan did the only thing they could to stop us. Using their rune-magicЧthe magic based on probabilitiesЧ the Sartan sundered the world and cast us into prison.

They formed four new worlds out of the rubble of the old, each from an element of the original: air, fire, stone, water The four are connected by the magical Death's GateЧconduits through which those possessing the rune-magic may safely travel. The four worlds should have worked to support each other: Pryan, the world of fire, would supply energy to Abar-rach, the world of stone. Abarrach would supply ores and minerals to Chelestra, world of water, and so forth. All was to be coordinated and fueled by a wondrous machine, the Kicksey-winsey, which the Sartan constructed on Ananus.

But the plans of the Sartan went awry. Their populations on each of die worlds began to mysteriously dwindle and die out. The Sartan on each world called for help from the others, but their pleas went unanswered. Each world had its own troubles.

I discovered this, you see, because it was my taskЧassigned to me by XarЧto travel to each of the worlds. I was to spy them out and discover what had happened to our ancient enemy And so, I visited each realm. The complete record of my adventures can be found m my journals, which have come to be known as The Death Gate Cycle

What I learned was a complete surprise My discoveries changed my lifeЧand not for the better. When I set forth, I had all the answers Now, I am left only with questions.

My lord blames my unsettled state of mind on a Sartan I met during my travels. A Sartan who calls himself by a mensch nameЧAlfred Montbank. And at first, I agreed with my lord. I blamed Alfred, 1 was convinced he was tricking me.

xii WEIS AND HICKMAN

But now, I am not so certain. I doubt everythingЧmyself . . . my lord.

Let me try to teil youЧin briefЧwhat happened to me.

ARIANUS

The first world I visited was the world of air, Arianus. It is made up of floating continents that exist on three levels. The Low Realm is the home of the dwarves, and it is here, on Drevlin, that the Sartan built the great and wondrous machine, the Kicksey-winsey. But before the Sartan could get the machine working, they began to die. Panic-stricken, they placed their young people into a state of suspended animation, hoping that when they awoke, the situation would have stabilized.

But only one of the Sartan survivedЧAlfred. He awoke to find himself the only one of his friends and family still alive. The knowledge appalled him, terrified him. He felt responsible for the chaos into which his world had fallenЧfor the mensch were, of course, on the brink of all-out war. Yet he was afraid of revealing the truth about himself. His rune-magic would give him the power of a demigod over the mensch. He feared that the mensch would try to force him to use his magic for their own destructive ends. And so Alfred hid his power, refused to use it even to save himself. Today, whenever he is threatened, instead of fighting back with his strong magic, Alfred faints.