"Christopher Golden - Outcast 03 - Ghostfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Golden Christopher)

GHOSTFIRE
Outcast Book 03


Christopher Golden &
Thomas Sniegoski
 Chapter One

Anticipation crackled in the air. His expectations were so high that it tingled upon his skin like magic.

Or, at least, the way Timothy Cade imagined that magic would feel. Yet in this world where
everything and everyone was connected by magic, Timothy was a blank space. Magic could not touch
him, and he could not wield it. He was uniquely alone, cut off in a way that no one else could ever
understand, and so he had to create his own kind of magic.

That was the source of his excitement today. He felt jittery, and his stomach fluttered, and he felt a
prickling all over his face and hands and the back of his neck, and wondered if this was what it felt like to
be in tune with the magical current that ran through the world. In his heart he suspected that even this
wonderful feeling could not compare with the sensation of magic that would always be denied him.

But even so, he could not erase the grin on his face. If this was all the magic he would ever have in
his life, Timothy would still consider himself lucky. It would do. It would most certainly do.

On that crisp, cool morning, Timothy and several of his friends had gathered in an open, grassy knoll
behind the servants' entrance to SkyHaven's kitchen. SkyHaven was a magnificent estate, an island
fortress that floated hundreds of feet above the ocean, just a short distance from the shores of Arcanum.
High above the water, the wind could blow quite cold, and so the boy raised the collar of his tunic and
renewed his focus upon the task at hand. His friends had come to see him test his latest invention.

Timothy called it the Burrower, and he had built it to drill into the earth. The original design had
occurred to him in a dream, back in the time when he had lived on the Island of Patience. He had woken
and quickly sketched out a rough design, thinking that if he could only get the parts together, it would
allow him to build an underground workshop that would be a safer refuge when the tropical storms swept
across the island in the spring.

Now, that dream had gone from rough sketch to reality. Or, almost. The vehicle he stood before
now was the prototype for a much larger digging machine that he would build if this version proved
successful. It was a boxy-looking thing, about the size of a sky carriage, with a studded, conical nose that
would twist to tear into the ground and funnel the disturbed soil toward the back of the Burrower. It had
one seat behind a thick shield of metal to protect the driver from flying debris as the cone spun, digging
into the earth. There was a small window at the center of the metal shield so that the driver could monitor
the progress of the dig. The window was made of a transparent and quite durable material called vitreous
that he concocted by mixing together the gummy saps of two of the land's most prevalent plants. The
vitreous would not shatter. The Burrower's power source was located behind the seat, a steam engine
also of Timothy's design, and powered by the burning of the heatstone Vulcanite. The entire craft rested
on a six-wheeled chassis.

Timothy walked around the Burrower and made yet another final inspection, feeling the expectant
eyes of his audience upon him. He had been readying the craft for its trial run for nearly an hour.