"J. Robert King - Onslaught Cycle 1 - Onslaught" - читать интересную книгу автора (King Robert J)

utterly amalgamated.
They were crowd pleasers, despite the fact that they rarely killed. Crowds loved beauty almost as
much as blood, and to watch Ixidor and Nivea fight was to watch beauty.
Ixidor turned, gazing out at the pit. It was a deep, black well, ringed round by tiers of seats.
Spectators bunched out like violent flowers. Faces lit with anticipation, human and inhuman-elfin, aven,
centaur, barbarian, simian, and unnatural combinations thereof. AH shone with the same bloodthirsty
light.
"We belong here together," Ixidor said, his heart pounding.
"We belong together," Nivea replied. She pivoted and bowed before the roaring crowd.
 The cheers fell suddenly away, as if choked by a killing cloud. Ixidor felt a dark presence at their
backs. Still clinging to Nivea, he turned. Together they saw.
From a dark prep pen, their adversaries emerged. The first was a tall, lean man. Pallid skin stretched
across his knobby skull. Blood-red eyes smoldered in sunken pits. Yellow teeth clenched in a crescent
grin. The man wore black robes that swayed as he lurched forward. He seemed a marionette-long limbs
quivering, feet clumsily pounding sand. He planted a gnarled staff beside him and halted, leaning on the
ancient wood. From the staff hung small skulls that rattled against each other, momentarily masking the
approach of the other creature.
It shifted in the dark pen, a noise like sand sliding over metal. Scales glinted above coiling muscles.
The creature advanced into the arena, seeming to drag the darkness with it. Only then did Ixidor realize
that it was the darkness.
"A giant serpent," he whispered to Nivea.
"Undead," she replied.
A side-winding snake, as large around as an elephant, looped its coils out across the sand. It welled
up behind the simpering wizard, and its cobra-hood spread to eclipse the stands.
Though the crowd had gone momentarily silent at the arrival of this great menace, now hisses and
murmurs told of wagers withdrawn and new stakes offered.
Ixidor's hands worked quickly, drawing a few new disks from pockets in his jacket and replacing
others. He spoke through a tight smile. "Any of your Order cronies know how to turn undead?"
She shook her head. "Nope." She stared at the massive serpent, a wall of black sinew. A vermillion
tongue lashed out, tasting the air. "I don't suppose you have any illusions that smell?"
"I have a few that stink, but not the way you mean," Ixidor said.
"Now we're staring down death," Nivea pointed out. "Do you still think we belong here together?"
He squeezed her hand. "We belong together. Let's do this."
Releasing his grip, he lifted the disks and fixed his eyes on the images there. Ink lines pulsed and
began to lift from the pages. Hatch marks turned to true shadows. Image strained to break into reality. The
moment the bell tolled, the disks would fly, and the images would emerge.
Beside him, Nivea grew still. Her vision retreated inward. With her mind's eye, she gazed out across
the world. In the far north, she had once fought beside Captain Pianna of the Order. Now captain and
Order both were decimated. In place of honorable battle, Nivea and her comrades had only dishonorable
blood sport. Still, it was a living. She tapped the warriors who had granted her summonation rights. Each
would receive a share of the purse-if he or she survived. Otherwise . . . there were the pit vermin. With
inward eyes, Nivea called them. Riding on lines of light, they answered the summons.
The bell tolled. The match began.
Nivea took a staggering step back, her arms flung wide. In the space before her, motes of light
twinkled into being. They seemed stars in a wide cluster but then lengthened into stalks of light. One by
one the stalks swelled to take solid form: twenty warriors in the leather and canvas armor of the Order.
They bore bone-tipped pole-axes and hook-ended swords. These warriors fought as a unit, striking hard
and fast, straight at the foe. Digging toes into sand, the Order contingent charged.
They had not taken two full strides before Ixidor cast a spell. Hurling the first of many disks from the
stack in his hand, Ixidor spoke an evocation. The words tore away the whirling paper and left only the