"Elenium 02 - The Ruby Knight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

There was a figure out there in the fog, indistinct
perhaps, but a figure nonetheless. It appeared to be
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Eddings, David - Elenium 2 - The Ruby Knight.txt
robed and hooded in black, and that faint glow seemed to
be coming out from under the hood. The figure was quite
tall and appeared to be impossibly thin, almost skeletal.
For some reason it chilled Sparhawk. He muttered in
Styric, moving his fingers on the hilt of the sword and the
shaft of the spear. Then he raised the spear and released
the spell with its point. The spell was a relatively simple
one, its purpose being only to identify the emaciated
figure out in the fog. Sparhawk almost gasped when he
felt the waves of pure evil emanating from the shadowy
form. Whatever it was, it was certainly not human.
After a moment, a ghostly metallic chuckle came out of
the night. The figure turned and moved away. Its walk
was jerky as if its knees were put together backwards.
Sparhawk stayed where he was' until that sense of evil
faded away. Whatever the thing was, it was gone now. "I
wonder if that was another of Martel's little surprises,'
Sparhawk muttered under his breath. Martel was a
renegade Pandion Knight who had been expelled from
the order. He and Sparhawk had once been friends, but
no more. Martel now worked for Primate Annias, and it
had been he who had provided the poison with which
Annias had very nearly killed the queen.
Sparhawk continued slowly and silently now, his
sword and the spear still in his hands. Finally he saw the
torches which marked the closed east gate of the city, and
he took his bearings from them.
Then he heard a faint snuffling sound behind him,
much like the sound a tracking dog would make. He
turned, his weapons ready. Again he heard that metallic
chuckle. He amended that in his mind. It was not so
much a chucle as it was a sort of stridulation, a chittering
sound. Again he felt that sense of overpowering evil,
which once again faded away.
Sparhawk angled slightly out from the city wall and
the filmy light of those two torches at the gate. After
about a quarter of an hour, he saw the square, looming
shape of the Pandion chapterhouse just ahead.
He dropped into a prone position on the fog-wet turf and
cast the searching spell again. He released it and waited.
Nothing.
He rose, sheathed his sword and moved cautiously
across the intervening field. The castle-like chapterhouse
was, as always, being watched. Church soldiers, dressed
as workmen, were encamped not far from the front gate
with piles of the cobblestones they were ostensibly laying