"01 - Canticle - R A Salvatore 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cleric Quintet)

Aballister nodded at the imp's rationale. Any delay could cost him, especially if the dark clouds broke into a blinding blizzard, one that would hide both the yote and the shimmering doorway back to Aballister's comfortable room. He pulled out a tiny ball, a mixture of bat guano and sulphur, crushed it in his fist, and pointed one finger at the group of taer. His chant echoed off the mountain face and back across the empty glacier ice, and he smiled, thinking it wonderfully ironic that the stupid taer had no idea of what he was doing. A moment later, they found out.

Just before his spell discharged, Aballister had a cruel thought and lifted the angle of his pointing finger. The fireball exploded above the heads of the startled taer, disintegrating the frozen bindings of the ice mountain. Huge blocks rained down, and a great rush of water swallowed those who had not been crushed. Several of the band floundered about in the ice and liquid morass, too stunned and overwhelmed to gain then-footing as the pool quickly solidified around them.

One pitiful creature did manage to struggle free, but Druzil hopped off Aballister's shoulder and swooped down upon him. The imp's claw-tipped tail whipped out as he passed by the stumbling creature, and Aballister applauded heartily.

The taer clutched at its stung shoulder, looked curiously at the departing imp, then fell dead to the ice.

"What of the rest?" Druzil asked, landing back on his perch. Aballister considered the remaining taer, most dead, but some struggling fertilely against the tightening grip of ice.

"Leave them to their slow deaths," he replied, and he laughed evilly again.

Druzil gave him an incredulous look, "The Lady of Poison would not approve," the imp said, wagging his wicked tail before him with one hand.

"Very well," Aballister replied, though he realized that Druzil was more interested in pleasing himself than Talona. Still, the reasoning was sound; poison was always the accepted method for completing Talona's work. "Go and finish the task," Aballister instructed the imp. "I will get the yote."

A short while later, Aballister plucked the last gray-brown mushroom from its stubborn grasp on the glacier and dropped it into his bag. He called over to Druzil, who was toying with the last whining taer, snapping his tail back and forth around the terrified creature's frantically jerking head-the only part of the taer that was free of the ice trap.

"Enough," Aballister said firmly.

Druzil sighed and looked mournfully at the approaching wizard. Aballister's visage did not soften. "Enough," he said again.

Druzil bent over and kissed the taer on the nose. The creature stopped whimpering and looked at him curiously, but Druzil only shrugged and drove his poison-tipped stinger straight into the taer's weepy eye.

The imp eagerly accepted the offered perch on Aballister's shoulder Aballister let him hold the bag of yote, just to remind the somewhat distracted imp that more important matters awaited them beyond the shimmering door.



The White Squirrel's Pet



The green-robed druid issued a series of chit-chits and clucks, but the white-furred squirrel seemed oblivious to it all, sitting on a branch in the towering oak tree high above the three men. "Will, you seem to have lost your voice," remarked another of the men, a bearded woodland priest with gentle-looking features and thick blond hair hanging well below his shoulders.

"Can you call the beast any better than I?" the green-robed druid asked indignantly. "I fear that this creature is strange in more ways than its coat."

The other two laughed at their companion's attempt to explain his ineptitude.

"I grant you," said the third of the group, the highest-ranking initiate, "the squirrel's color is beyond the usual, but speaking to animals is among the easiest of our abilities. Surely by now-"

"With all respect," the frustrated druid interrupted, "I have made contact with the creature. It just refuses to reply. Try yourself, I invite you."

"A squirrel refusing to speak?" asked the second of the group with a chuckle. "Surely they are among the chattiest..."

"Not that one," came a reply from behind. The three druids turned to see a priest coming down the wide dirt road from the ivy-streaked building, the skip of youth evident in his steps. He was of average height and build, though perhaps more muscular than most, with gray eyes that turned up at their comers when he smiled and curly brown locks that bounced under the wide brim of his hat. His tan-white tunic and trousers showed him to be a priest of Deneir, god of one of the host sects of the Edificant Library. Unlike most within his order, though, this young man also wore a decorative light blue silken cape and a wide-brimmed hat, also blue and banded in red, with a plume on the right-hand side. Set in the band's center was a porcelain-and-gold pendant depicting a candle burning above an eye, the symbol of Deneir.

"That squirrel is tight-lipped, except when he chooses not to be," the young priest went on. The normally unflappable druids' stunned expressions amused him, so he decided to startle them a bit more. "Well met, Arcite, Newander, and Cleo. I congratulate you, Cleo, on your ascension to the status of initiate."

"How do you know of us?" asked Arcite, the druid leader. "We have not yet reported to the library and have told no one of our coming." Arcite and Newander, the blond-haired priest, exchanged suspicious glances, and Arcite's voice became stem. "Have your masters been scrying, looking for us with magical means?"