"Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody 5 - Elegy for a Lost Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haydon Elizabeth)

The Awakening
 1
YLORC

When the mountain peak of Gurgus exploded, the vibrations coursed
through the foundations of the earth.
Above ground, the debris field from the blast stretched for miles,
ranging from boulder-sized rubble at the base of the peak to fragments of
sand that littered the steppes more than a league away. In between, shards
of colored glass from windows that had once been inlaid in the
mountain's hollow summit lay like a broken rainbow, glittering in the sun
beneath an intermittent layer of sparkling dust.
Below ground, a small band of Firbolg soldiers felt the concussion
rumble beneath their feet, though they were some miles east of Gurgus. A
few moments of stillness passed as dust settled to the floor of the tunnel.
When Krarn finally released the breath he was holding, the rest of his
patrol shook off their torpor and resumed their duties. The
Sergeant-Major would flay them alive if they let something as small as a
tremor keep them from their appointed rounds.
A few days later, the soldiers reluctantly emerged under a cloudless sky,
having reached the farthest extent of this section of their tunnel system,
and the end of their patrol route.
Krarn stood on the rim of the craterlike ruins of the Moot, a meeting
place from ancient times, now dark with coal ash and considered haunted.
Nothing but the howl of the wind greeted him; no one lived in the rocky
foothills that stretched into steppes, then out to the vast Krevensfield Plain
beyond.
Having finished their sweep of the area, his men had quietly assembled
behind him. Krarn was about to order them back into the tunnels when the
hairs on his back-from his neck to his belt-stood on end.
It began as the faintest of rumblings in the ground. The tremors were
not enough to be noticed on their own, but Krarn noted the trembling of
vegetation, the slightest of changes in the incessantly dry landscape, little
more than the disturbance that a strong breeze might make. He knew that
it was no wind that caused this disturbance; it had come from the earth.
Silently ordering his men into a skirmish line, Krarn scanned the area,
looking for any more signs. After a few minutes, the feeling passed, and
the earth settled into stillness again. Nothing but wind sighed through the
tall grass.
"Aftershocks," he muttered to himself.
With a shake of his head, Krarn led his men back into the tunnels. And
in so doing, missed the chance to sound a warning of what was to come.
As the days passed, the tremors grew stronger.
The surface of the Moot, baked to a waterless shell by the summer sun,
began to split slightly, thin cracks spreading over the landscape like the
spidery pattern on a mirror that had broken but not shattered.
Then came steam, the slightest of puffs of rancid smoke rising up
ominously from the ground beneath the tiny cracks.
By day it was almost impossible to see, had eyes been in the locality to