"Dave Duncan - A Handful Of Men 2 - Upland Outlaws" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

2003, was when Ulien'quith fled the capital," Sagorn snapped. He was excited, and that was encouraging. The old sage was not easily persuaded,
and if he accepted that the coming year 3000 was important, then something in his endless studies of ancient lore had led him to that belief. "You
are right, your Majesty. A year or two either way does not matter. "


"But the millennium itself does!" Rap agreed. "The pixies disappeared in the War of the Five Warlocks. Now his Majesty has seen a pixie. That
seems to fit, somehow, doesn't it? Every sorcerer from the wardens on down seems to have disappearedI detect almost no occult power in use
anywhere. I sense a terrible evil overhanging the world. Warlock Raspnex's warnings of chaos and the fall of the Protocol-those may fit, also,
although I am far from ready to trust the dwarf. Any dwarf."


The great pending evil was rooted in Dwanish, and therefore dwarvish in origin. Not knowing that, the mundanes frowned disbelievingly and began
to argue. Rap started to explain and was distracted by farsight. Downstairs in the kitchen, a dirty rag hanging on a nail had started to move in a
breeze that had not been blowing until now.


He felt the hair on his scalp prickle. The shutters had been forced, and two massive hands were gripping one of the bars that blocked the window.
The owner of those hands was still outside, and hence shielded from him, but their size and their gray color were unmistakably dwarvish.


The bar bent like a rope and was removed. Its neighbor followed, a moment later. The hands grabbed the stiles of the opening; a large head
appeared, and massive shoulders. Raspnex squirmed into the room, and the ambience shivered as he used power to complete his acrobatic entrance
and land on his feet.


He found Rap at once, and recoiled in shock. For a moment the ambience was shadowed by images of thick stone walls. "I come in peace, your
Majesty!"


Raspnex believed that Rap was still his better at sorcery, but there were no secrets in the ambience.


Trapped!


"Then you are welcome, " Rap said. "You are in no danger from me, Warlock. "


The warden of the north was squat and broad, in the manner of dwarves. However he might look to a mundane, in the ambience his age was
obvious. His hair and beard were still a normal iron-gray, but the turf on his chest was silver. The years had softened his rocky muscles like cooled
lava, and his skin hung limp on him. He was still a powerful man, though, as his treatment of the window bars had shown. Now his agate eyes
slitted in astonishment as he appraised Rap's image in the shadow world.


"So I see!" He grinned, showing quartz-pebble teeth.


He turned and thrust an arm out through the blank of the window embrasure. With a shiver of power, he hauled another man inside bodily, and then
there were two dwarves down there in the kitchen.