"Robert Jordan - Conan The Magnificent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jordan Robert)

in the minds of his listeners. "Kings and lords who murder true believers in
the names of the foul demons they call gods! Fat merchants who pile up more
gold in their vaults than any clan of the mountains possesses! Princesses who
flaunt their half-naked bodies and offer themselves to men like trulls! Trulls
who drench themselves in perfumes and bedeck themselves in gold like
princesses! Men with less pride than animals, begging in the streets! The
filth of their lives stains the world, but we will wash it away in their
blood!"
The scream that answered him, shaking the gray granite beneath his feet,
barely touched his thoughts. Deep into the warren of caverns beneath this very
mountain he had gone, through stygian passages lit only by the torch he
carried, seeking to be closer to the spirits of the earth when he offered them
prayers. There the true gods led him to the subterranean pool where eyeless,
albescent fish swam around the clutch of huge eggs, as hard as the finest
armor, left there countless centuries past.
For years he had feared the true gods would turn their faces from him
for his study of the thaumaturgical arts, but only those studies had enabled
him to transport the slick black spheres back to his hut. Without the
knowledge from those studies he could never have succeeded in hatching one of
the nine, could never have bound the creature that came from it to him, even
as imperfectly as he had. If only he had the Eyes of Fire ... no, when he had
them all bonds, so tenuous now, would become as iron.
"We will kill the unbelievers and the defilers!" Basrakan intoned as the
tumult faded. "We will tear down their cities and sow the ground whereon they
stood with salt! Their women, who are vessels of lust, shall be scourged of
their vileness! No trace of their blood shall remain! Not even a memory!" The
hook-nosed Imalla threw his arms wide. "The sign of the true gods is with us!"
In a loud, clear voice he began to chant, each word echoing sharply from
the mountains. The thousand watching warriors held their collective breath. He
knew there were those listening who sought only gold looted from the cities
rather than the purification of the world. Now they would learn to believe.
The last syllable of the incantation rang in the air like struck
crystal. Basrakan ran his eyes over the Brythunian captives, survivors of a
party of hunters who had entered the mountains from the west. One was no more
than sixteen, his gray eyes twisted with fear, but the Imalla did not see the
Brythunians as human. They were not of the tribes. They were outsiders. They
were the sacrifice.
Basrakan felt the coming, a slow vibration of the stone beneath his
feet, before he heard the rough scraping of claws longer than a man's hand.
"The sign of the true gods is with us!" he shouted again, and the
creature's great head emerged from the tunnel.
A thousand throats answered the Imalla as the rest of the thick, tubular
body came into view, more than fifteen paces in length and supported on four
wide-set, massive legs. "The sign of the true gods is with us!" Awe and fear
warred in that thunderous roar.
Blackened plates lined its short muzzle, overlapped by thick, irregular
teeth designed for ripping flesh. The rest of that monstrous head and body
were covered by scales of green and gold and scarlet, glittering in the pale
sun, harder than the finest armor the hand of man could produce. On its back
those scales had of late been displaced by two long, leathery boils. Drake,