"Maggie Furey - Shadowleague 1 - The Heart of Myrial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Furey Maggie)

my eyesight is.тАЭ Cocking its head to one side, it peered again at its fellow
Loremasters. Cergorn knew what an odd sight they must all makeтАФeven to
a centaur like himself, with his human torso surmounting the dappled, cloud-
grey body of a powerful warhorse. The others looked equally strange.
Towering over Cergorn on his left was Skreeva, the Shadowleague
representative of the Alvai, the intelligent insectoid race that ruled the land
of Fel Karivit. Her glistening, translucent wings spread like a rustling cloak
over the silvery chitin armor of her body. Her triangular head was dominated
by two glittering compound eyes as intricate and beautiful as the finest
diamondsтАФand, like diamonds, their beauty was soulless, inhuman, and
cold. Her long, hinged forearms were armed with saw-edged blades to hold
and pierce, and each foot was tipped with a razored claw. With her fearsome
set of intricate double mandibles and the rigid, expressionless mask of her
chitinous face, the Alva looked exactly what she wasтАФa perfect killing
machineтАФbut next to the Gaeorn who fidgeted on CergornтАЩs other side,
Skreeva looked as harmless and innocent as a newborn lamb.
Maskulu looked like a creature born of darkest nightmare. Gaeorn were
subterranean dwellers, and though Cergorn knew that beauty was a matter of
custom and expectation, and tried not to let his own prejudices affect his
judgment, he privately considered it a mercy that such abominations did not
normally emerge to tarnish the clean light of day. Its slender form was low
to the ground but stretched for some five or six yards in length, ending in a
malignant-looking forked tail. All down its black, segmented body ran a
multitude of legs, each one ending in a pair of barbed and poisoned claws. A
cluster of long, bristling hairs could be seen where each segment joined the
next. Dark scales glistened, iridescing faintly in the sunshine and distorting
the pure golden light into the sickly, greenish luminescence of decay. Small,
bright eyes glittered redly, with a restless, feral hunger. Bizarre feathered
antennae jutted out from above MaskuluтАЩs flattened face, which was adorned
with a set of spiked compound mandibles even more fearsome than those of
the Alvai. It was a good thing, Cergorn reflected, that humans, with their
grasping, acquisitive natures, had been kept apart from the GaeornтАФfor the

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THE HEART OF MYRIAL - SHADOWLEAGUE 1 - MAGGIE FUREY

ghastly, glittering jaws of the earth-dwellers were formed of pure diamond.
Though it was extremely difficult to kill one of these fearsomely armed and
armored horrors, there were many humans stupid or greedy enough to
consider the rewards well worth the risk.
Neither the Gaeorn nor the Alvai had jaws that would adapt to human
speech. Though the Gaeorn made a vocal sound like the harsh grinding rattle
of sliding gravel, they actually communicated through a series of clicks and
pauses of varying length that formed a complex code. In their natural habitat
underground, the sounds were produced by striking a stone surface with
their mandibles. The message would carry a long way through the strata of
rock, to be picked up by the sensitive bristles along the GaeornтАЩs sides.
Instead of voices, the Alvai used a language of rasping vibrations, created
either by rapid agitations of their wings or rubbing together of their saw-
toothed limbs. Cergorn could understand the speech of both races, and could