"Ed Greenwood - Band of Four 04 - The Dragon's Doom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

At its flickering heart the lone, sweat-soaked figure frantically waved
fingers grown impossibly long, trying to shout words with a voice that had
suddenly tightened into a loud hiss. A forked tongue darted from grimacing
lips as the sparks raced aloft to shape many bright serpent headsтАФwhich then
struck in unison, lashing down at the wildly gesturing man with terrible
speed.
The bald priest screamed under those fangs of light, high and shrill. His
suddenly long and rubbery arms flapped helplessly in the brightly boiling
radianceтАФand then caught fire in a long gout of flame.
He screamed again, dancing grotesquely in the rushing conflagration, flesh
melting and receding from bones with horrible swiftness. Smaller explosions
bloomed and rolled all around that capering figure, and in the wake of each a
freed spell fell away from the doomed priest and became a ghostly white
serpent of flickering force, writhing and undulating in uncanny silence.
Within this ghostly circle of swaying heads and lashing coils, the dying
priest danced on, his flesh melting. His screams became raw, faint and
feeble... and he sank to the floor, still dancing-jerking back and forth,
helplessly and horribly, like a stick puppet flailed about at a market fair
for the amusement of small children.
Sprawled on the dark stone, the priest melted swiftly down to near bones-and
as he became more skeletal, the freed, slithering spells dancing around him
moved in, coiling into and out of the writhing bones. Where they passed, bones
parted, dissolving into streamers of smoke, and shifting ... twisting...
The skeleton was soon little more than a flaming skull atop a whirlwind of
tumbling bonesтАФremains spun into the undulating shape of a serpent by the
ghostly Serpent-spells.
The fading serpent-shape coiled, reared menacinglyтАФand the skull atop it
exploded in a puff of bone-dust. The bones below faded, and out of that
writhing collapse rose the last glowing wisps of magic, drifting up to
whatever it was that hung high overhead in the darkness.
There they shone for one whirling moment around a mottled, hand-sized stone
floating alone in midair. Glowed, and then sank into the stone, to glow no
longer.
As darkness returned to the ceiling, the watching priests looked down from
where the wisps had gone, tightened lips grimly, and sighedтАФsome with
wistfulness, and many more with relief.
"This failure was not unexpected," one man said into the silence, his cold
tones loud, firm, and flat. "Shall we resume?"
Another priest lifted a hand. "We shallтАФ and with Ghuldart gone, and his
boasts and claims with him, one thing is certain: None of us has the might to
master the Thrael. The Great Serpent is come not back among us. Yet."
A third, younger priest asked, "Could some of us not cast a few spells of
the Thrael each, and so weld together a ruling council from among our ranks?
Need it be one man?"
The first priest rose to his feet and replied, "There I hear the voice not
just of you, Lothoan, but of all your ilk: the young, eager, and restless
amongst us, who thirst for power and see change as no concern at all if it
wins us more power swiftly. Hear me, now, all of you younglings. Hear and
learn"
Caronthom "Fangmaster" turned slowly to survey all the robed men on the