"03 - Night Masks - R A Salvatore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cleric Quintet)

Cadderly stared long and hard at the closed door, and at the telltale crumbs on the floor beside his night table.
Things had seemed so very obvious to him, both of what had transpired in his room while he was asleep, and of Brennan's intentions for a night of mischief. So obvious, and yet, Cadderly knew they should not have been.
"Aurora?" he whispered, searching for the significance. "The dawn?" Cadderly translated, and shook his head slowly; what could the dawn have to do with silhouettes of dancing girls on Brennan's shoulder?
The young priest looked back to the tome. Wnild he find his answer there?
He had to force himself to eat, to remind himself that he would need all his strength for the hours ahead. Soon after, one hunger sated and another tearing at him, Cadderly dove back into the Tome of Universal Harmony.
The pages began to flip, and the song played on and on.
Mopping Up
^^^^^ anica blew a lock of her strawberry blond hair
Х ^ from in front of her exotic, almond-shaped
Х Х brown eyes and peered intently down the for-
Х m est path, searching for some sign of the ap-J^Li^ preaching enemy. She shifted her compact, hundred-pound frame from foot to foot, always keeping perfect balance, her finely toned muscles tense in anticipation of what was to come.
"Are the dwarves in position?" Elbereth, the new king of Shflmista's elves, asked her, his strange, almost eerie, sflver eyes looking more to the trees surrounding the path than to the trail itself.
Two other elves, one a golden-haired maiden, the other with black hair as striking as Elbereth's, came to join the friends.
"I would expect the dwarves to be ready in time," Dani-ca assured the elf king. "Ivan and Pikel have never let us down."
The three elves nodded; Elbereth could not help but
13
14
R. A. Salvatore
smile. He remembered when he had first encountered the gruff dwarves, when Ivan, the tougher of the pair, had found him bound and helpless as a prisoner of their enemy. Never would the elf have believed that he would soon come to trust so implicitly in the bearded brothers.
"The dryad has returned," the black-haired elf wizard, Tintagel, said to Elbereth. He led the elf king's gaze to a nearby tree, where Elbereth managed to make out Ham-madeen, the elusive dryad, as her tan-skinned, green-haired form peeked from around the trunk.
"She brings news that the enemy will soon arrive," remarked Shayleigh, the elven maiden. The anxious tone of her voice and the sudden sparkle that came into her violet eyes reminded Danica of the fiery maiden's lust for battle. Danica had seen Shayleigh 'at play* with both sword and bow, and she had to agree with Ivan Bouldershoulder's proclamation that he was glad Shayleigh was on their side. Tintagel motioned for the others to follow him to the rest of the gathered elves, some two score of Elbereth's people, almost half of the remaining elves in Shilmista. The wizard considered the landscape for a moment, then began positioning the elves along both sides of the path, trying to property distribute those better in hand-to-hand combat and those better with their great bows. He called Danica to his side and began his spell-casting chant, walking along the elven lines and sprinkling white birch bark chips.
As he neared the end of the spell, Tintagel took up his own position, Danica moving to her customary spot beside him, and sprinkled chips upon himself and his human escort.
Then it was completed, and where Danica and forty elven warriors had been standing now stood rows of unremarkable birch trees.
Danica looked out from her new disguise to the forest about her, which seemed vague and foggy to her now, more like a feeling than any definite vision. She focused on the path, knowing that she and Tintagel must remain aware of their surroundings, must be ready to come out of the
Night Masks
15
shape-changing spell as scon as Ivan and Pikel began the assault.
She wondered what she looked like as a tree, and thought, as she always thought when Tmtagel performed this spell, that she might like to spend some quiet time in this form, viewing the forest around her, feeling its strength in her feet-become-roots.
But now there was kilting to do.
"Oo," moaned Pikel Bouldershoulder, a round-shouldered dwarf with a green-dyed beard braided halfway down his back and open-toed sandals on his gnarly feet, as he watched the distant spectacle of Tintagel's spell. The longing gaze was plain to see, and Pikel almost toppled out of the tree in which he sat.
"No, ye don't!" his brother whispered harshly from across the way, disdaining Pikel's druidic tendencies. Ivan tucked his yellow beard into his wide belt and shifted his dwarven-hard buttocks about on the tree branch and his deer-antlered helmet about on his head, trying to find a comfortable position in this very undwarveniike perch. In one hand he held a club made from the thick trunk of a dead tree. A heavy rope had been tied about his waist and looped up over a branch halfway across the trail.
Ivan had accepted the high seat, knowing what fun it would bring, but he drew the line at being turned into a treeЧabove his would-be druid brother's whining protests. Ivan had offered a compromise, enquiring of Tintagel about a variation of his mighty spell, but the elf wizard had declined, explaining that he had no power to turn people into rocks.
Across the path, in a perch opposite Ivan, Pikel seemed much more comfortable, both with his tree seat and tree-trunk club. He, too, sported a rope about his waist, the other end of Ivan's. Pikel's comfort with the perch could not defeat his frown, though, a frown brought on by his
16
R. A. Salvatore
longing to be with the elves, to be a tree in Shilmista's soil.
Guttural goblin grumbling down the path alerted the dwarves of the enemy's approach.
"Sneaksters," Ivan whispered with a wide smile, trying to brighten his brother's surly mood. Ivan didn't want Pikel pouting at this critical moment.
Both dwarves tightened their grip on their dubs.
Soon the enemy band passed directly under them, spindle-armed and ugly goblins mixed in with pig-faced ores and larger orogs. Ivan had to force himself not to spit on the wretched throng, had to remind himself that more fun would be had if he and his brother could hold their positions just a short while longer.
Then, as the dryad Hammadeen had told them it would, a giant came into view, plodding slowly down the path, seemingly oblivious to its surroundings. By the dryad's words this was the last giant remaining in Shilmista, and Ivan wasn't about to let the evil thing go crawling back to its mountain home.
"Sneaksters," Ivan whispered again, the title he had chosen for him and his brother, a title he knew that the giant, above all others, would appreciate in just another moment.
The huge head bobbed steadily closer. One goblin stopped suddenly and sniffed the air.
Too late.
Ivan and Pikel leveled their clubs and, with a nod to each other, hopped off their high perches, swinging down at the path. Their timing proved perfect and the oblivious giant stepped between them, its gaze straight ahead, its head bobbing at just the right height.
Pikel connected just a split-second before Ivan, the heavy dwarves sandwiching the monster's head in a tremendous slam. Ivan immediately dropped his bloodied club and tore out his favored double-bladed axe instead.
On the path below, the smaller monsters went into a frenzy, pushing and shoving, diving to the dirt, and running in all directions. They had lost many companions in the last
Night Masks
17
few weeks, and they knew what was to come.