"Paul S. Kemp - Erevis Cale 1 - Twilight Falling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kemp Paul S)

you remember this globe?"
"Yes."
Vraggen shared a glance with Azriim. The half-drow smiled and winked.
"Where is the globe now?"
The priest's brow furrowed and he said, "After we left the temple, we disputed how to divide the
plunder. The globe was a curiosity but not very valuable. Solin took it as a throwaway part of his share."
Vraggen kept his eagerness under control. The fools had no idea what they had taken from that temple.
"Solin?"
"Solin Dar," the priest replied. "A warrior out of Sembia."
"Where in Sembia?"
"Selgaunt," the priest answered.
Vraggen would have laughed if he'd had a sense of humor. He hailed from Selgaunt himself, had served
with the Zhentarim there. It was almost as though the globe had been trying to find him. He decided to take
the news as a sign of Cyric's favor.
"Thank you, priest," he said to the Tymoran. He looked to Dolgan. "Throttle him."
Dolgan grinned, grabbed the priest around the throat, and choked him. While the bound priest gagged
and died, Azriim moved to Vraggen's side.
"At least we have a name now. Selgaunt?"
Vraggen nodded. They would use their teleportation rods to move quickly to Selgaunt, find Solin Dar,
and subject him to the same technique as they had used on the Tymoran priest.
Soon, Vraggen would have his globe.
 CHAPTER 1
Midnight of the Soul
Cale sat alone in the darkness of Stormweather Towers's parlor. He had not bothered to light one of the
wrist-thick wax tapers that stood on candelabrum around the room. The darkness enshrouded him, which
was well. It suited his mood. He felt... black. Heavy. The Elvish language had a word that perfectly
expressed his feeling: Vaendin-thiil, which meant "fatigued by life's dark trials." Of course, in elven
philosophy the concept of Vaendin-thiil never appeared alone, but was paired always with a balancing
concept which the elves, in their wisdom or folly, deemed a necessary corollary: Vaendaan-naes, "reborn
in life's bright struggles." For the elves, dark trials necessarily gave rise to bright rebirths. Cale was not so
sure. At that moment, he could see only the darkness. The brightness of rebirth seemed impossibly distant.
Selune, trailed by her tears, peered gibbous through the parlor's high windows, casting the room in a faint
luminescence. Artwork from the four corners of Faerun decorated the dim parlor: paintings from the
sun-baked lands of the far south, sculpture from Mulhorand, elven woodcarvings from the distant High
Forest. Suits of archaic armor, ghostly in the silver moonlight, stood in each corner of the large room: a suit
of fine elven mail taken from the ruins of Myth Drannor, a set of thick dwarven plate mail from the Great
Rift, and two suits of ornate Sembian ceremonial armor, both centuries old. That armor was the pride of
Thamalon's collection.
Reflexively, Cale corrected his thoughtтАФthe armor had been the pride of Thamalon's collection. His
lord was dead. And the Halls of Stormweather felt dead too, a great stone and wood corpse whose soul
had been extinguished.
Cale settled deeper into his favorite leather chair and brooded. How many evenings had he spent in that
parlor with his nose in a tome, feeding his appetite for literature and languages, finding respite in the lore
and poetry of lost ages? Hundreds, certainly. The parlor had been as much his room as were his own
quarters.
But not anymore.
The books and scrolls lining the recessed walnut shelves held for him no comfort, the paintings and
sculptures no solace. In everything Cale saw the ghost of his lord, his friend. Thamalon had been as much a
father to Cale as an employer, and his lord's absence from the manse felt somehow . . . obscene. The heart
had been ripped from the family.