"Tim Lebbon - Dusk 02 - Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lebbon Tim)

Lenora turned the machine and stood on its back, and from there she could see right across ConbarmaтАЩs
waterfront. Every surviving KroteтАФalmost fifty of themтАФand the Mages were watching her. She felt the
power in that, and smiled.

Angel smiled back.

тАЬThereтАЩs work to be done!тАЭ Lenora said. тАЬMore machines to be built, more preparations to make. The
sun has fled, and the twilight itтАЩs left behind will be filled with the death cries of Noreela. This is your time:
the time youтАЩve lived for from the moment you became Krotes.тАЭ She paused, looked down at the head
of the machine with its mad eyes and slavering mouths. тАЬI once saw the northern shores of Noreela
awash with blood, and that memory has always been bitter, because the blood was my own. Now itтАЩs
time to stain the land again, this time with its own blood. Noreela will fall; thereтАЩs no doubt of that. ItтАЩs the
manner of that fall I look forward to seeing.тАЭ

More fire,she thought, and the machine formed several balls of flame and sent them to hover above the
heads of the Krotes.

The warriors cheered, the fire reflected in their eyes. Lenora walked the thing among them, letting them
reach out and touch its cool stone and cooler flesh. The fires faded, but in the twilight they all became
familiar with this thing that would help them win the war.

Lenora smiled at Angel and SтАЩHivez, and she saw that they were pleased.




Chapter 2

ALISHIA KNEW THATshe was dreaming, yet she could feel the books coming to life.

Her stroll through the library seemed to last forever. She could not recall where she had begun, and she
had no inkling of where she was going. There were only walls of books. There was no ceiling, only hazy
heights where the weird light that suffused the air at ground level faded away into a colorless dusk.
Beneath her feet there was the ground: stone and dust here; worn timber boarding there. She had passed
through one book-formed alley where the ground was comprised of uprooted grave markers laid flat.
She had knelt and touched the carved stone, but the engravings had been in a language she did not know,
all the names strange to her. Beside these markers, the book spines revealed intimate histories of the
unknowns buried there.A Moment on the Road for Shute, one read.A Thought in a Cave at
Whimple, said another. She had run her fingers along the worn spines, but she dared not remove a book
and start reading in case she became trapped in one moment forever.

Sometimes the stacks were built straight and tall, and they converged in the distance until it almost
looked as though they were touching. Perhaps if she walked fast enough she would reach a point where
the walls met, spines converging, pages overlapping, and then she would become one more tome of
history in this vast place.

At times, the giant shelves seemed ready to fall. They curved left and right, tilted outward or inward, and
on several occasions she found herself moving through a tunnel of books, stacks meeting just above her
head, histories propping one another up, and she wondered what would happen were she to remove a