"Christopher Golden - Outcast 04 - Wurm War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Golden Christopher)

WURM WAR
Outcast Book 04


Christopher Golden &
Thomas Sniegoski
 Prologue

SkyHaven was falling, and it was all Timothy's fault.

The world of Terra ran entirely on magic. It was within everything and everyone, with a single
exceptionтАФTimothy Cade, the only person on Terra who had no capacity for magic. Behind his back,
the mages snickered and called him the un-magician. It was a slur, an insult, but it was true.

Magic had no affect on him, and if he so much as touched anything enchanted, he would temporarily
unravel spells that even the most powerful Wizards of Old could not have broken. Not only that, but
recently he discovered that if he concentrated hard enough, he could stretch the nullifying field that
surrounded him, so he didn't even have to touch magic to disrupt it.

Timothy had always thought of the effect he had on magicтАФ and his inability to perform even the
simplest spellтАФas an affliction. But more and more he had been finding that it was what made him
unique, and that there was strength in him that he had never known. Magic itself was pure, but if the
intentions of the mage wielding it were cruel or evil, the magic became dark and deadly.

Never had there been a wizard as dark and cruel as Alhazred. Long thought to be dead, he had
returned with an insidious plan. He had been kidnapping and killing mages so that he could absorb their
magic. Worse, he had collected thousands of ghostfire lampsтАФlights powered by the magical spirit
essence of dead magesтАФand was consuming the magic from their lingering souls. But that was only the
beginning. Alhazred had begun to tap into the magical matrixтАФthe very source of all the magic in the
worldтАФand once he took control of that, no one would be able to stand against him.

Timothy knew he had to do something.

Focusing on the tingling sensation of the magic as it slid over him, he pushed and felt the null field
ballooning around himтАФexpanding. It took every ounce of will and inner strength he could muster to
force the field away from himself, spreading and stretching to encompass the entire massive chamber, and
beyond.

Alhazred's eyes had darkened in anger as every ghostfire lamp, every piece of spell-glass in the
room, shattered in a single moment, releasing the energies of the dead mages in a blinding flash. For the
briefest of moments, Timothy felt triumphant.

And then SkyHavenтАФan island fortress that floated above the oceanтАФbegan to fall from the sky.

His mind cried out in panic. Through fear and instinct, he drew the null field back to himself, and the
freefall of SkyHaven came to an abrupt and stomach-flipping stop.

The realization of what he had done gradually sank in.

I've disrupted the whole matrix, he thought. Everything must have winked out for a second, all