"01 - The Road to Underfall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jefferies Mike)

glow.

'It was the age of the Mason Kings, the architects of all that is
beautiful across the length and breadth of Elundium. City after
city, each one more intricate and delicate; each one mirroring the
beauty of a perfect world, rose up, glittering in the soft changeless
light, until . . .'

'Until?' pressed the younger voice, eager to hear the story, yet
terrified that the Nightbeasts might be listening in the darkness.

'Until King Mantern took up his mason's chisel. He was driven
by strange dreams to fear the sunlight, and all he built shadowed
what the other kings had built. On the outside in hard bleak lines
he used only dark stone, rough hewn and quarry raw, while within
there was black marble, traced in silver; it lined every room. He
built the Granite City, sheer and windowless, a dark place of inner
courtyards and secrets, and in its midst, rising in brittle points,
stood the Towers of Granite.

'He sought tirelessly for the purest black marble, and his quest
led him deeper and deeper into the marble valleys until,
amongst the blackest shadows, he found a pure seam of the
richest marble ever known. It was etched in veins of silver.'

The point of light had grown stronger as the story unfolded
and it reflected fine feathery veins around it. ~

'Mantern raised his hammer and swung a mighty blow at his
chisel and that hammer blow broke through the surface of ~:
Elundium, and from that tiny hole night burst out.'

The young voice gasped in the darkness.

'Night roared and screamed around King Mantern, tearing
the hole into a great split. Earthquakes shook the marble valleys
and black storms tore at its surface. Mantern tried to stop the
earth splitting but the more he held on to each side the more
violent the earthquakes became until a great mountain had
formed beneath the struggling King and he stood in total
darkness beside a black entrance. Wise men say it was the first
moment that the world turned, but among the Masters of Magic
it is known that this was the moment of Krulshards' birth.'

The voice paused and the point of light grew smaller and
smaller until it became lost in the blackness.

'Without the sun, King Mantern was blind. He reached out
shaking hands against the raging storms but all around him the
winds began to laugh, cruel shrieking sounds of torment, and