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

you may have for us ... there.тАЭ
The Master of Bats felt several tiny, icy jolts as other prepared magics
were forced into wakefulness and then broken and drained away ere they could
take effectтАФand then a curtain seemed to roll back in his mind, and he was
left with a fair and sunlit view down the Vale from Flowfoam not long after
dawn, as the last mists stole away like hastening wraiths above the mighty
Silverflow on some day in the past. The tiny figures of women come down to the
banks to do their washing could be seen at the first bend. He peered at them,
trying to see their faces and hear the chatter amid their laughter, as a
waterswift flew past overhead, and . . .
"I'll leave you this scene to brood upon," Embra's voice said to him, with a
warmth and closeness whose affection shocked Arkle Huldaerus.
That and the shock of the blow of Craer's flung frying pan that had felled
him hours before in the midst of his spells, with the Four all around him, had
shaken the Master of Bats more than all the events of the year before this
day. He shivered helplessly.
And then she was gone, and he was alone.
Truly alone, the last of his ready magic stripped from him and with no bats
left whose eyes he could borrow. He plunged once more into that view of the
Silverflow, with mists he could almost smell and merry converse he could
almost hearтАФand then thrust it away again angrily. There would come a time
when he would need its solace to keep away despair or even madness, but for
now he had better things to think about.
The bitch had at least been true to her word. She'd refrained from blasting
his mind and leaving him unable to work magic or know who he was. Ah, no. He
knew all too well who he was.
He was a helpless, spell-drained wizard chained upside down in a dungeon
cell under Flowfoam Palace. The beginnings of a dark storm of a headache were
beginning to rage now, as the echoes of that frying pan blow were made
monstrous by the blood pounding in his head. The Master of Bats clenched his
teeth and spat a single furious obscenity into the surrounding darkness.
Rage and pain clawed at each other, doing battle inside him as he hung heavy
in his chains, numb in some places and throbbing in others. Groaning from time
to time, Arkle Huldaerus drifted in their stormy grip, letting himself be
driven this way and that. . .
He slept, or thought he did. Yet it seemed that he'd not been alone with the
darkness all that long when light arose around him again.
A cold, blue-white glow this time, with none of the warmth of firelight. It
came from the wall of the cell across from him, hitherto hidden in the
darkness, and it was moving. Moving?
Huldaerus stared at the glow. Was he asleep, and this a dream-fancy, or was
that bitch SilvertreeтАФor the other one, her slyskirt sidekickтАФat work with
spells on his mind, trying to drive him into raving?
The glow had a shape now, as it stepped silently out of the solid wall-the
shape of a skeleton, with two tiny stars of cold flame twinkling in its
eye-sockets. Those eyes looked at him, and the chained wizard knew an old and
fell intelligence lurked behind them, mirth that betokened good for no
creature alive within them. A hand whose floating bones should all have
clattered to the floor waved jauntily at him, the bony feet strolled across
the cell, and the hand sketched another wave in his direction as the skeleton