"04 - The Fallen Fortress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cleric Quintet)

Danica eyed the young priest curiously. The crossbow had become a symbol of violence to Cadderly, and a symbol of Cadderly's abhorrence of violence to those who knew him best To see him strap it on so easily, with an almost cavalier attitude, twisted Danica's heart
Cadderly sensed both the woman's gaze and her confusion. He forced himself to accept it thinking that he would probably shatter many conceptions in the days ahead. For Cadderly had come to see the dangers facing the Edificant Library in ways that others could not
"I saw that you had nearly exhausted your supply of the
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darts," Belago stammered. "I mean... there's no charge for this batch." He pulled his other hand around, producing a bandolier filled with specially crafted bolts for the tiny crossbow. "I figured I owed it to youЧwe all owe it to you, Cadderly."
Cadderly nearly laughed aloud at the absurd proclamation, but he respectfully held his control and accepted the very expensive gift from the alchemist with a grave and approving nod. The darts were special indeed, hollowed out in the center and fitted with a vial that Belago filled with volatile Oil of Impact.
"My thanks for the gift," the young priest said. "Be assured that you have aided the cause of the library in our continuing struggle against the evil of Castle Trinity."
Belago seemed pleased by that remark. Head bobbing once more, he accepted Cadderly's handshake eagerly. He was still standing in the same place, smiling from ear to ear, as Cadderly and Danica walked out into the hall
Cadderly could still sense Danica's continuing unease and could see the disappointment etched in her features. The young priest's narrowing stare attacked that disappointment. "I have dismissed the guilt because it has no place in me," was all the explanation he would offer. "Not now, not with all that is left to be done. But I have not forgotten Barjin or that fateful day in the catacombs."
Danica looked away down the hall, but hooked Cadderly's arm with her own, showing her trust in him.
Another form, shapely and obviously feminine, entered the corridor as the pair moved toward Danica's room at the southern end of the complex. Danica tightened her grip on Cadderly's arm at the scent of an exotic and overpowering perfume.
"My greetings, handsome Cadderly," purred the shapely priestess in the crimson gown. "You cannot imagine how pleased I am that you have returned."
Danica's grip nearly cut off Cadderly's blood flow; he felt his fingers tingling. He knew that his face had blushed a
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deep scarlet, as reddish as Priestess Histra's revealing gown. He realized, sensibly, that this was probably the most modest outfit he had ever seen the lusty priestess of Sune, the Goddess of Love, wearing, but that did not make it modest by anyone else's standards. The front was cut in a low V, so low that Cadderly felt he might glimpse Histra's navel if he got up on his toes, and though the gown was long, its front slit was incredibly high, displaying all of Histra's shapely leg when she brought one foot out in front of the other in her typically alluring stance.
Histra did not seem displeased by Cadderly's obvious discomfort or by Danica's growing scowl. She bent one leg at the knee, her thigh slipping completely free of the gown's meager folds.
Cadderly heard himself gulp, didn't realize that he was gawking at the brazen display until Danica's small fingernails dug deep lines into his upper arm.
"Do come and visit, dear young Cadderly," Histra purred. She looked disdainfully at the woman on Cadderly's arm. "When you are not so tightly leashed, of course." Histra slowly, teasingly moved into her room, the door's gentle click as she closed it lost beneath the sound of Cadderly's repeated swallowing.
"IЧ* he stammered, at last looking Dariica in the eye.
Danica laughed and led him on down the hall. "Fear not," she said, her tone more than a little condescending. "I understand your relationship with the priestess of Sune. She is quite pitiful, actually."
Cadderly looked down at Danica, perplexed. If Danica was speaking the truth, then why had little lines of blood begun their descent on his muscled arm?
"I am not jealous of Histra, certainly," Danica went on. "I trust you, with all my heart." Just outside her room, she stopped and faced Cadderly squarely, one hand brushing the outline of his face, the other tight about his waist
"I trust you," Danica said again.
"Besides," added the fiery young monk in very different,
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stronger tones as she turned into her room, "if anything romantic ever happened between you and that single-minded, over-painted lump of too-too quivering flesh, I would put her nose somewhere in back of one of her ears."
Danica abruptly disappeared into her room to retrieve the book of notes she and Cadderly had prepared for their meeting with Dean Thobicus. The young priest remained in the hall, considering the threat and privately laughing at how true it could be. Danica was fully a foot shorter than he, and easily a hundred pounds lighter. She walked with the grace of a dancerЧand fought with the tenacity of a bee-stung bear.
The young priest was far from worried, though. Histra had spent all of her life in the practice of being alluring, and she made no secret of her designs on Cadderly. But she hadn't a chance; not a woman in the world had a chance of breaking Cadderly's bond with his Danica.
*****
A blackened, charred hand tore up through the newly turned earth, reaching desperately for the open air above. A second arm, similarly charred and broken at a gruesome angle halfway between the wrist and the elbow, followed, grasping at the mud, tearing at the natural prison that held the wretched body.
Finally the creature found enough of a hold to pull his hairless head from the shallow grave, to look again upon the world of the living.
The blackened head swiveled on a neck that was no more than skin shriveled tight to the bone, surveying the scene. For a fleeting instant, the wretch wondered what had happened. How had he been buried?
A short distance away, down a little hill, the creature saw the glow of the evening lamps of a small farmhouse. Beside it stood another structure, a barn.
A barn!
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The thin sliver of the consciousness that had once belonged to a man known as Ghost remembered that barn. Ghost had seen this body, his body, charred by that wicked Cadderly in that very barn! The evil corpse drew in some airЧthe action could not be called breathing where this undead thing was concernedЧand dragged his blackened and shriveled body the rest of the way out of the hole. The notes of that distant, yet strangely familiar, melody continued to thrum in the back of his feeble consciousness.
Unsteadily, Ghost loped more than walked toward the structure, the memories of that horrible, fateful day coming back more fully with each stride.
Ghost had used the Gkearufu, a powerful device with magical energies directed toward the spirit world, to steal the body of the firbolg Vander, an unwilling associate. Disguised as Vander, with the strength of a giant, Ghost had then crushed his own body and had thrown it across the barn.
And then Cadderly had burned it The malignant monster looked down to his bone-skinny arms and prominent ribs, the hollow shell that somehow lived.
Cadderly had burned his body, this body! A single-minded hatred consumed the wretched creature. Ghost wanted to kill Cadderly, to kill anybody dear to the young priest, to kill anybody at all.
Ghost was at the barn then. Thoughts of Cadderly had flitted away into nothingness, replaced by an unfocused anger. The door was over to the side, but the creature understood that he did not need the door, that he had become something more than the simple material wooden planking now blocking his way. The shriveled form wavered, became insubstantial, and Ghost walked through the wall.
He heard the horse whinnying before he came fully back to the material plane, saw the poor beast standing wild-eyed, lathered in sweat. The sight pleased thellndead
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thing; waves of a new sensation of joy washed over Ghost as he smelled the beast's terror. The undead monster ambled over to stand before the horse, let his tongue drop out of his mouth hungrily. With all the skin burned away from the sides of the tongue, its pointy tip hung far below Ghost's blackened chin. The horse made not a sound, was too frightened to move or even to draw breath.
With a wheeze of evil anticipation, Ghost put deathly cold hands against the sides of the beast's face.