"Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth 7 - The Pillars of Creation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

Pillars of Creation V1.0
Scanned by sliph on 2/23/02

ISBN 0-765-30026-5 (regular edition) ISBN 0-765-30318-3 (limited edition)

First Edition: November 2001

Dedicated to the people in the United States Intelligence Community who, for decades, have
valiantlyfought to preserve life and liberty, while being ridiculed, condemned, demonized, and shackled by
the jackals of evil.

Evil thinks not to beguile us by unveiling the terrible truth of its festering intent, but comes, instead,
disguised in the diaphanous robes of virtue, whispering sweet-sounding lies intended to seduce us into the
dark bed of our eternal graves.
-translated from Koloblicin's Journal

The Pillars Of Creation
by Terry Goodkind

CHAPTER 1
Picking through the dead man's pockets, Jennsen Daggett came across the last thing in the world she would
ever have expected to find. Startled, she sat back on her heels. The raw breeze ruffled her hair as she stared
wide-eyed at the words written in precise, blocky letters on the small square of paper. The paper had been
folded in half twice, carefully, so that the edges had been even. She blinked, half expecting the words to
vanish, like some grim illusion. They remained solid and all too real.
Foolish though she knew the thought was, she still felt as if the dead soldier might be watching her for any
reaction. Showing none, outwardly, anyway, she stole a look at his eyes. They were dull and filmy. She
had heard people say of the deceased that they looked like they were only sieeping. He didn't. His eyes
looked dead. His pale lips were taut, his face was waxy. There was a purplish blush at the back of his bull
neck.
Of course he wasn't watching her. He was no longer watching anything. With his head turned to the side,
toward her, though, it almost seemed as if he might be looking at her. She could imagine he was.
Up on the rocky hill behind her, bare branches clattered together in the laind like bones clacking. The
paper in her trembling fingers seemed to be rattling with them. Her heart, already thumping at a brisk pace,
started aD pound harder.
Jennsen prided herself in her levelheadedness. She knew she was letting her imagination get carried away.
But she had never before seen a dead person, a person so grotesquely still. It was dreadful seeing someone
who didn't breathe. She swallowed in an attempt to compose her own breathing, if not her nerves.
Even if he was dead, Jennsen didn't like him looking at her, so she stood, lifted the hem of her long skirts,
and stepped around the body. She carefully folded the small piece of paper over twice, the way it had been
folded when she had found it, and slipped it into her pocket. She would have to worry about that later.
Jennsen knew how her mother would react to those two words on the paper.
Determined to be finished with her search, she squatted on the other side of the man. With his face turned
away, it almost seemed as if he were looking back up at the trail from where he had fallen, as if he might
be wondering what had happened and how he had come to be at the bottom of the steep, rocky gorge with
his neck broken.
His cloak had no pockets. Two pouches were secured to his belt. One pouch held oil, whetstones, and a
strop. The other was packed with jerky. Neither contained a name.
If he'd known better, as she did, he would have taken the long way along the bottom of the cliff, rather than
traverse the trail across the top, where patches of black ice made it treacherous this time of year. Even if he