"Dragonlance - Preludes 2 Vol 2 - Flint The King" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

ing created. Draconians.
It was the equipping of his massive army that brought the
general to this meeting today.
A great, crackling rumble suddenly reverberated through
the valley, like an impossibly loud peal of thunder. The peak
of Duerghast, south of the general's temple, pitched mon-
strous boulders from its cauldera. Idly, the masked figure
watched the house-sized pieces of rock crash to earth, tum-
bling down the mountainsides and adding to the destruction
as they fell. The helmet blocked the general's peripheral vi-
sion, but all of a sudden he detected a presence off to his left.
He whirled around and saw the new arrival unconsciously
finger the steel ring that had allowed him to be teleported
here.

"You are late," said the general, his voice a deep, rasping
complaint.
The newcomer, a dwarf, ignored the rebuke and shuffled
toward the figure towering before him. The general's height
accented the small stature of this one. When the dwarf
threw back his hood, his grotesque face suddenly came into
view, a fitting image to counter the general's mask, though
the dwarf's features were his own.
Milky, pale skin covered the dwarf's body, with a bluish
cast vaguely reminiscent of a corpse. His eyes were pale,
and very, very wide. Now, even under the deep overcast, he
squinted against the daylight. A shock of yellow hair on the
dwarf's head shot in all directions, bristly and uncontrolled.
His mouth was concealed by a tangled beard that, despite its
length, grew only in sparse, ugly patches from his cheeks,
chin, and neck.
The dwarf was a derro, a race of less pure stock than the
hill dwarf or Hylar mountain dwarves, since it reputedly re-
sulted from an ancient intermixture of human and dwarven
blood. Still a mountain dwarf, he was a member of the
Theiwar clan.
He came directly from Thorbardin, the great underground
realm of the mountain dwarves, where he served as the ad-
viser to Thane Realgar, ruler of the Theiwar. The Theiwar
was the only clan of derro, and they competed jealously with
their rivals of the Hylar, Daergar, and other clans.
In addition to his derro race, this dwarf differed from the
typical mountain dwarf in another important way: he was a
magic-using savant. Though all dwarves were resistant to
magic, few were able actually to cast spells. Among these,
the savants of the derro were most potent; and of these sa-
vants, Pitrick, adviser to the thane, was the most feared.
Pitrick moved awkwardly, partially dragging his right
foot. He leaned forward in an unnatural stance, his body
distorted by the large hump of flesh that deformed his back