"Simon R. Green - Haven 06 - Bones of Haven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Simon R)

sounded distinctly in the gloom, drawing steadily closer. There were two separate sets of footsteps, and
Hawk smiled and relaxed a little. It was only a couple of rioters. But the more he listened, the more it
seemed to him there was something wrong with the footsteps. They were too slow, too steady, and they
seemed to echo unnaturally long on the quiet. The air was tense, and Hawk could feel his hackles
rising. There was something bad hidden in the darkness, something he didn't want to see. A slight
breeze blew out of the gloom towards him. It smelt of dust and sulphur.

"They're coming," said Storm softly. "The chaos bringers, the lords of entropy. The dust and ruins of
reality. The Brimstone Boys."

Hawk glared at the sorcerer, and then back at the darkness. Storm had sounded shaken, almost
unnerved. If just the approach of the Brimstone Boys was enough to rattle a hardened SWAT man,
Hawk had a strong feeling he didn't want to face them with nothing but his axe. He fell back a step and
glanced across at Winter.

"Might I suggest this would be a good time to try out another of those incendiary things?"

Winter nodded sharply and gestured to Barber. He took another of the glowing stones from his pouch,
whispered the activating Word, and threw the stone into the darkness. They all tensed, waiting for the
explosion, but nothing happened. Storm laughed brusquely, a bleak, unpleasant sound.

"That won't stop them. They control reality, run rings round the warp and weft of space itself. Cause
and effect run backwards where they look. They're the Brimstone Boys; they undo natural laws, turn
certainties into whims and maybes."

"Then do something!" snapped Winter. "Use your magic. You're supposed to be a top-level sorcerer,
dammit! You didn't sound this worried when you first told us about them."

"I didn't know," whispered Storm, staring unseeingly at the gloom. "I couldn't know. They're too big.
Too powerful. There's nothing we can do."

Winter grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him back out of the way. "His nerve's gone," she said
shortly to the others. "The Brimstone Boys must have got to him somehow. I'm not taking any chances
with these bastards. The minute you see them, kill them."

"We're supposed to take these creatures alive, remember?" said Barber mildly.

"To hell with that," Winter snapped. "Anything that can take out an experienced sorcerer like Storm so
easily is too dangerous to mess about with."

Hawk nodded, and he and Fisher moved forward to stand on either side of Barber. The weaponmaster
was quivering slightly, like a hound straining at the leash, or a horse readying for a charge, but his
sword hand was perfectly steady. Hawk glared into the darkness, and then looked down suddenly. The
corridor floor seemed to be shifting subtly under his feet, stretching and contracting. His boots were
sinking into the solid stone floor as though it had turned to mud. He looked across at Barber and Fisher
to see if they'd noticed it too, and was shocked to discover that they were now yards away, as though
the corridor had somehow expanded vastly while he wasn't looking. He jerked his boots free from the
sticky stone, and backed away. The ceiling was impossibly far above him, and the wall was running
with boiling water that steamed and spat at him. Birds were singing, harsh and raucous, and
somewhere children screamed in agony. The light changed to golden summer sunlight, suffusing the