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

melted into the waiting stones, its glow dimming, and . .. was gone.
Arkle Huldaerus blinked at the darkness that reigned unbroken under his nose
once more, shook his head, and sighed. This had not been a good day, nor did
the morrow hold bright prospect.
He almost envied that skeleton its freedom to walk through walls.
The young man's bald head was slick with sweat despite the chill of the
cavernous chamber. The snake fang-adorned bottom edge of his high-collared
robe swirled above bare feet as risen magic played dancing white fires around
them, shimmering across the mirror-smooth floor of the vast room. A pattern of
intertwined serpents, jaws agape, encircled his wide sleeves, and scales were
visible on the glistening flesh of his forearms and the backs of his hands.
The man took two measured steps forward, murmured an incantation, and flung
up his hands as if to cradle a large globe of empty air. White sparks crawled
tentatively from his fingertips to shape that sphere... and swirl about it...
and then rise in tendrils around the Serpent-priest, building to silently
raging brightness.
That growing light was reflected in the steady, watching eyes of two tiers
of benches of expressionless priests along the chamber walls, well back from
the spellweaving priest.
 The cold radiance brightened as the incantation crafting it rose in
volumeтАФbrightened and grew, becoming slowly writhing spirals of tentacles
around the priest... and then coalescing into serpentine bodies shaped all of
sparks. As those swaying serpent-forms grew snake-heads, they began to glide
around and around the bald priest in an undulating, quickening dance.
The watching priests made not a sound, but some leaned forward eagerly. Not
one looked away, even for an instant, as swiftly building spells erupted into
bright bursts, one flaring atop another as the priest who stood alone at their
heart cried phrase after phrase, his voice loud now with confidence, his
fingers writhing like excited snakes in ever more rapid weavings.
White sparks sheaDied the spellweaver's body, drawing in about him in thick
coils, until it seemed a forest of large and ever larger serpents was lovingly
encircling their creator. Their twining force slowly lifted the priest off the
floor until he stood upright on empty air almost his own height off the
ground, hands still furiously shaping spells.
Each new magic reached up, straining toward the lofty ceiling of the
chamber. The unfolding spells seemed to draw upon something up there, unseen
in the darkness, that sent down spiderweb-thin lines of forceтАФforce that
blossomed into cold, bright fire when it touched the silently raging serpents
woven by the lone priest.
In the heart of the light his incantations gasped and stammered on. Sweat
drenched him, and his racing fingers were trembling now, his body shuddering
as if fighting to stand against the snatching gusts of a gale.
A spell burst into a sudden shower of sparks, and there came a sudden, brief
murmurтАФpart consternation, and part satisfactionтАФfrom the watching clergy as
the bald priest convulsed, shrieked something despairing, and clawed at the
air as if to ward off a pouncing monster.
Sparks fell, and there came another explosion, bright and then dark,
motes of fire raining down in all directions as the spellweaving priest
sobbed bitterly. Burst after burst, in swift succession, tore the dancing
serpents into a swirling cloud.