"Furey,.Maggie.-.Artifacts.of.Power.4.-.Dhiammara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Furey Maggie)

For an instant, the Forest Lord hesitated. While the Mage had been trapped in his realm they had
become close friends, and she had meant a good deal to himЧbut now that he could exercise his
Maggie Furey Vhia.mm3.r3.
will again nothing must interfere with his freedom. The days of the Magefolk were over, and once
again the Phaerie could take the world and shake it to its foundations. Hellorin shrugged,
dismissing Eilin from his mind along with his softhearted son, who would have left the Phaerie
steeds in their useless human form. D'arvan would be taught to know better in times to come.
With a spine-wrenching leap, the white mare sprung skyward. The heart of the Forest Lord, fettered
and earthbound for so long, soared with his Phaerie steed as her hooves spurned the ground and she

sped aloft, with stretching strides, along a path of invisible air. So intent was he on his
triumph that he failed to notice the gate in time that the Sword of Flame had opened behind him.
He did not see D'arvan, his son, leap through the gateway after Aurian, to be whirled away into
oblivion.
Scores of voices took up Hellorin's cry as his people followed; shadowy figures no longer, but
comely and clad in radiant flesh: soaring behind him on their own mounts, who but moments before
had worn the guise, and held the consciousness and intelligence, of mortal men. Higher and higher
the Phaerie climbed, swarming upward like a drift of dark smoke as they followed their Lord into
the heavens. Those who remained earthbound, through lack of sufficient horses, scattered into the
forest as though they planned to follow the Hunt on foot.
The Forest Lord glanced proudly back at his followers, his triumph marred only by the fact that
this gathering was but a pallid reflection of the great ridings of old, for little more than
fivescore of the Phaerie steeds had come with the strangers to the Vale. Therefore many of his
folk could not take to the skies. Firmly, he shrugged the thought aside, determined not to let
such comparisons mar this great and triumphal moment. If the missing horses were on this side of
the ocean they would be foundЧand if they were still lost across the seas, beyond the powerful
reach of the Phaerie, then others could easily be bred from the stock that had been recovered
today. Casting such mundane matters firmly from his mind, Hellorin reveled in his new freedom,
breathing in great drafts of the icy wind that stung his face and burned thinly in his lungs.
Glancing earthward, he gloried in the power of his Phaerie mount as the white mare leapt from
cloud to cloud, striking thunderbolts with her silver hooves.
Far below, Hellorin's keen eyes spied human shapes: a throng of fleeing Mortals who were swarming
like ants through the smoldering trees near the rim of the Vale. Though such creatures had their
uses, they must first be taught a lessonЧ that the Phaerie were their masters now. With a
triumphant howl, the Forest Lord called up his pack of great hounds and spurred the white mare,
sending her hurtling downward, toward the invaders. His people followed, curving down out of the
sky like shooting stars, their eyes ablaze with the thirsting lost for Mortal blood; their voices
upraised in a shrill, discordant song of battle that sliced the air like blades. One by one, the
mercenaries who had followed Eliseth on her ill-fated raid were hunted down like deer amid the
trees, and like deer were slaughtered while the earth amid the roots of the tortured forest drank
deeply of their blood. Only when all the Mortals had been slain did the Phaerie look around them
for other prey.
In the center of the Vale's great bowl, on the shores of the lake, the Earth-Mage Eilin shuddered
to hear the death-screams of the slaughtered Mortals. The Phaerie Lord's treachery was a minor
matter when compared with the loss of her daughter, but the betrayal hurt nonetheless. Eilin,
almost crushed beneath the weight of her grief, stood numb and irresolute. Only her stubborn pride
kept her on her feet. For the second time in her life, she beheld die destruction of all that she
held dearЧher daughter, her home, her hopes. The first time, when Geraint had died and her life
had fallen apart in ruin, she had risen above grief and disaster to build a productive and
purposeful life from the rubble of her dreamsЧbut she was older now: crushed, bewildered, and