"Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 2 - Elminster In Myth Drannor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed) He was running now, across the little space that remained between them, as she choked,
stumbled forward-and swept her gore-soaked arm up once more to drive the blade of her honor deep into her own right eye. She fell into his arms, then, lips frozen trying to whisper his name again, and the Coronal let her down gently onto the moss, despite the growing roar of magic tearing past him, streaming up into the night sky like bloody smoke from where the dragon tooth had been. Magic that he knew sought to claim his life. "Oh, Lyntra," he murmured. "Was any dispute worth your final death?" He rose from her then, looking at the blood glistening on his hands, and gathered his will. Her gore was a weakness, a route the magic mustering above him could take past his gathered power if he banished it too late. As he stared at his spread hands, the dark wetness faded from them, until they blazed blue-white with risen magic, racing along his skin like fire. The Coronal looked up, then, at the sudden darkness above him-and found himself gazing straight into the open, dripping jaws of a blood dragon. It was the most deadly spell of the elder Houses, a revenge magic that took the life of its awakener. The Doom of the Purebloods, some called it. The dragon towered above him, dark, wet, and terrible in the night, as silent as a breeze and as deadly as a rain of enchanted venom. Living flesh would melt before it, twisting, withering, and shriveling into grey rot and tangled bones and sinew. The ruler of all Cormanthor stood robed in his aroused power, and watched the dragon strike. It crashed down around him, in a rain that shook the entire island, setting leaves to rustling all around and shattering the stillness of the lake into a hundred racing wavelets. Rocks rolled and moss scorched away into smoking ash where it touched. Thwarted in its strike by the dome of empty air his risen power guarded, it swirled and roared, flowing in a hungry circle around the elven ruler. Eltargrim stood unmoving, untouched in the circle his power protected, and watched it run into oblivion. Once more it raised its head to menace him, a tattered shadow of its former self. He stood his When it was all gone, the old elf ran a trembling hand through his white hair and knelt again at the side of the sprawled lady. "Lyntra," he said sadly, bending to kiss lips where dark blood still bubbled forth. "Oh, Lyntra." Blood spat into smoke on her throat then, touched by his power just as the slaying spell she'd called up had been. More smokes rose, as his tears began to fall in earnest. He struggled against them, as the glass chimes sounded again, and the faltering of his shielding spells let in a burst of distant laughter and wild, high music from the Erladden revel. He struggled because he was the Coronal of Cormanthor, and his duty meant he had one more thing to say before the blood stopped flowing, and she grew cold. Eltargrim threw back his head to look once at the moon, choked back a sob, and managed to say huskily, looking into the one staring eye that remained, "You shall be remembered with honor." And if his grief overmastered him thereafter, as he cradled the body of the one who was still his beloved, there was no one else on the island to hear. Part I Human One Savage Trails And Scepters Nothing is recorded of the journey of Elminster from his native Athalantar across half a world of wild forests to the fabled elven realm of Cormanthor, and it can only be assumed to have been uneventful. Antarn the Sage |
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