"Ed Greenwood - Forgotten Realms - Elminster 4 - Elminster In Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

sank, tumbling in the warm, wet depths, slowing now as...
Something dark and snakelike coiled out of the red depths and snatched him. The tentacle lashed
around him with the searing bite of a drover's whipтАж and then he was being dragged back up again.
Well, in the Hells it was hardly to be expected that there'd be any rest for the wicked. So-let the
torment begin. Mystra preserve and forfend. Please.
He was up out of the blood-water now, dripping. Unfamiliar magic raged around him, darting into
him in little numbing jabs. He was changing, forced under its goads, flowing and unfolding and
becoming... himself again, a human with arms and legs and-eyes.
Eyes that swam even as grunts and rending groans and a shrieking symphony of squeals told him he
was growing ears. Then all at once, the world spun and shook and came to a halt, amid shocking clarity.
Elminster was standing on warm, sharp rock, and his feet were bare. He had feet, and legs... and his
own old, gaunt body, even to the beard. He was standing in a little hollow in a great waste of rock, with
foul streams of gas curling around him, burning his legs as they sighed past. Atop the rocks, bare, thorny
branches of stunted trees stabbed like despairing fingers up into the blood-red sky. The ground trembled.
From somewhere near at hand a flame shot up, raged briefly amid scorched rocks, and fell away out of
sight again.
El became aware that something was standing in the deep shadow at the far end of the cleft. It
strode forward, stepping around many teeth of rock. Flame-yellow eyes met his with the force of a
striking serpent and held him in thrall as their owner advanced leisurely, giving Elminster a smile that was
a long way from pleasant-and at the same time promised many things.
An eyebrow lifted, mirroring curving horns above, and a softly hissing voice asked almost gently,
"Don't know me, little cringing wizard? I favor a more splendid shape, these days!"
Magic curled around Elminster's throat, choking any answer he might have wanted to make, and the
devil's smile widened, "like my gentle talons spell? Nothing to touch the great and mighty magics you're
wont to hurl, of course, but it serves me... aye, it serves."
The horn-headed devil turned its head and smiled, those flame-yellow eyes still transfixing Elminster
like the tines j of a gigantic fork. "Still know me not, Old Mage? You must be tired."
Elminster gazed at the burly devil, wondering just when he'd become, in this unholy creature's eyes
at least, any sort I of expert on the diabolical.
His captor was a naked humanoid whose skin was seal smooth and mottled gray, shot through with
hues of brown j and darker gray... very like the shadowed stones of Avernus that rose around them both.
A few scales glinted on the fiend's neck and ankles. Its humanlike head sported two curving horns.
What had ; seemed at first glance to be a cloak drawn around the devil could now be clearly seen as a
necklace of tentacles. One shot forth to curl around Elminster's bare shoulders, thrusting like a vengeful
eel through tatters of drifting vapor-a good thirty feet or more-as the eyes that held Elminster's became a
little redder.
"Know, then," the devil said with grotesque formality, sketching a little bow-and forcing, with his
tentacle, the dazed and exhausted Old Mage to match it-"that you are j the guest of Nergal, most mighty
of the outcast lords of Hell." His smile broadened, and his eyes were now as red as old coals. тАЬYou may
greet me."
El struggled to speak, finding his throat dry and stiff Nergal's smile became a smug, crooked thing.
"Body a mite rebellious, great wizard? How sad. You will already have noted that my poor and paltry
magics have served to return you to your true shape, and you've already felt my gentle talons. They
ensure that any magic you cast or unleash is drained to strengthen my bonds upon you-oh, you may see
them not, but bound you are, and shall be for as long as it's my pleasure to keep you so. You're wrapped
in spell bindings linked to ray mind; you'll never escape me unnoticed"
Nergal's lips curled in a sneer as he added, "None have broken my mind yet, Elminster, though
you're welcome to try. Attaining freedom is a laudable goal for any sentient being."
The ground trembled again, and a flame shot up over their heads, searing a squalling imp. Nergal's
smile broadened as he withdrew his tentacle-and the shuddering of the rocks beneath Elminster's baking