"Paul S. Kemp - Forgotten Realms - War of the Spider Queen 06 - Resurrection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kemp Paul S)

Roarke,
and Riordan
Acknowledgements

Countless colleagues and friends deserve my thanks, but one above all: Phil
Athans. Thanks, my friend.
 Eight legs, eight.
Clattering on the stones, ticking, ticking, tapping, tapping impatiently.
They were done with their battle, with their feasting, devouring their siblings, growing stronger
with each juicy bite. Bloated and spent, they stood around the octagonal stone, myriad eyes staring
into myriad eyes, eight legs eight tapping and clattering.
They could eat no more; they could fight no more. Exhaustion held them in place, as Lolth had
desired from the beginning. The thousands became eightтАФthe eight strongest, the eight smartest, the
eight most devious, the eight most ruthless. One would fuse with the Yor'thae. One would assume the
mantle of a goddess, the deity of Chaos.
Only one, whom the others would serve . . . if the One gave them that choice and that chance. If
not, then they, like their thousands of dead siblings, would be devoured.
The spiders knew that they could not influence the choice any longer. The competition was long
past, the fight decided, and only She Who Was Chaos could make the final pronouncement. The
spiders did not delude themselves with false hubris. They did not deceive themselves with any
thoughts that they might undo that which would be done. The broodling war was over.
Eight legs eight tap-tapped nervously on the stone.
Beyond the cocoon of the inner sanctum, the drow were not so accepting. They basked in pride,
they placed self above Lolth, they thought themselves worthy or even beyond that peak. They dared
presume knowledge of Lolth, of the choice before them all, and they dared plot and connive to deny
their rivals their proper place.
Fools, they were, and the spiders knew it. Futility glided in their every step, their fate long sealed.
The plot was scripted by the Lady of Chaos, and that was the most perplexing and tantalizing of
all. For any road paved by Lolth would not run straight, nor to any expected destination.
That was the beauty.
The spiders knew it.
The time was approaching.
The spiders knew it.
Eight legs eight clattered on the stones, ticking, ticking, tapping, tapping, patience twisted,
stretched and torn asunder.
Eight legs, eight.
 Chapter One
Inthracis sat in his favorite chair, a high-backed throne made from bones packed together with a mortar
of blood and pulped skin. Tomes and scrolls, the tools of his research, lay open atop the large basalt table
before him. The soaring walls of the three-story library of Corpsehaven, his fortress, loomed on all sides.
Eyes stared at him from out of the walls.
Made from the heaped decay of thousands upon thousands of semi-sentient, magically preserved
corpses, Corpsehaven's walls, floors, and ceilings could have filled the cemeteries of a hundred cities.
Bodies were the bricks of Inthracis's keep. He regarded himself as an artisan, a fleshmason who smashed
and twisted the moaning forms into whatever contorted shape he needed. He was indiscriminate in his
choice of materials; all manner of bodies had been pressed into the structure of his keep. Mortals, demons,
devils, and even other yugoloths had round a home in Corpsehaven's walls. Inthracis was nothing if not a
fair murderer. Any being that stood in his way on his rise through the ranks of the Blood Rift's ultroloth
hierarchy ended up in one of his walls, decaying and near death but still sensate enough to feel pain, still
alive enough to suffer and moan.