"C. S. Friedman - Coldfire 3 - Crown of Shadows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friedman C. S)

won that game. And he was hardly in shape to make life-altering decisions.
But...

He wanted the feeling of purpose back. He wanted it back so badly he could taste it. He would have
traded his soul to have it again... and the demon wasn't asking for that, was he? Only for his assistance in
ridding the world of a murderer. In cleansing the Tarrant name once and for all.

"I can call it off," he said at last. "Whenever I want. When I say it's over, you go and leave me alone.
Agreed?"

The cracked face twisted. The faceted eyes glittered. It was more than a smile, less than a grin-and it
made the air vibrate with hatred, until Andrys' soul was filled with it.

"As you command," it whispered.

Demon's Woke

One

She walks in the moonlight, her footfall on the weathered planks as soft and as silent as a ghost's. All
about her the sailors are busy cleaning up the detritus of the storm: mending sails, untangling lines, freeing
those items which were, for safety's sake, bound to the deck. Intent upon their tasks, they do not notice
her. The wind is crisp and clean and she imagines that she can catch the scent of land in it. So close, so
very close.... For a moment she trembles, and almost turns back. One more month, the priest said.
Maybe less. But then she remembers what that month would be like- what all other months have been
like on this ship-and she stiffens with new-found resolve. No more, she tells herself. No more.

The sea is quiet now, having spent all its anger in the three days before; in the moonlight she can see no
white upon the water's surface, only black glass waves and an occasional sparkle of starlight. Quiet, so
quiet. Death must be like that: black and still and utterly silent, a smooth realm that ripples ever so softly
as each soul passes into it. Free of turbulence. Free of pain. Free of fear and its attendant demon, whose
silver eyes must even now be searching her cabin, wondering where she has gone.

The thought of him makes her breath catch in her throat, and her whole body shivers in dread. No, she
whispers. Never again. She steps up onto the railing, her dark toes gripping the rounded wood. The sea
is beneath her-

"Mes!" A sailor's voice, behind her. For an instant she imagines she knows which one it belongs to-the

blue-eyed Faraday boy, suntanned and lean and oh so innocent-and then she leans forward ever so
slightly, into the night, and lets go. "Mes! No!" Footsteps approach her even as her toes lose hold, the
long fall into darkness beginning just as he reaches the place where she stood-and then more footsteps,
more cries, as the others come running. A world away, they seem to her. A distant dream. She is aloft, a
creature of the air, afiight above the waves. Falling. Beneath her the water seems to gather in
anticipation-not glass now but velvet, cool and welcoming-and then the moment is past and she breaches
the surface, the cold waves give way to her body and she is beneath them, struggling in the icy depths,
shocked out of her dream state by the frigid reality of the sea.

Panicking suddenly, choking on seawater, she fights to get back to the surface. There is no thought of
suicide now, only the blind, unthinking terror of a suffocating animal. Water pours down her face as she