"Julian May - The Pliocene Exiles 04 - The Adversary" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

sadomasochistic element of her sick mind. Compelling Stein,
the former planet-crust driller, to help her, Felice began to blast
the narrow Gibraltar isthmus with bolts of psychoenergy. She
intended to admit the Atlantic waters into the nearby empty
basin of the Pliocene Mediterranean and drown the Grand
Combat participants.

As the madwoman smote the earth with her mindbolts, the
rocky barrier neared the breaking point. But Felice weakened
before the job was complete. In her extremity of hatred she
prayed for help from whatever powers of darkness might
exist--and the assistance came from somewhere. A final titanic
burst of psychoenergy opened the Gibraltar Gate and a cascade
of seawater thundered into the dry Mediterranean, heading
toward the White Silver Plain below the Tanu capital of Muriah.

Felice was flung from the balloon by the final concussion.
Quite insane, she assumed the shape of a monstrous raven.
Stein and Sukey soared away on the stormwinds and ultimately
landed in a remote part of France.

The prescient Brede Shipspouse knew about the catastrophe.
She appeared to Amerie, Basil, and Chief Burke in their prison
cell, healed them, and took them to a room within the Redactor
Guild complex, high on the Mount of Heroes above Muriah.
There Elizabeth lay in her self-induced coma. Brede instructed
the trio to guard Elizabeth, "the most important person in the
world," and to wait until the following morning, when they
would know what had to be done.

Meanwhile, the Grand Combat was reaching its climax. For the
first time in forty years, the Firvulag were holding their own. The
stubbornly conservative Little People had previously refused to
emulate human tactics, as the Tanu had done; but the Firvulag-
Lowlife victory at Finiah had opened the eyes of their generals,

Sharn and Ayfa, and inspired them to innovation. In the melee
phase of Combat scoring, the Firvulag were only slightly behind
the Tanu. The finale of the ritual war, in which individual cham-
pions met hand to hand, would decide the victor.

The rivalry between Aiken and Nodonn divided the loyalty of
the Tanu forces. At a war feast prior to the Heroic Encounters,
Nodonn tried to discredit Aiken by producing Bryan Grenfell
and the latter's adverse study of humanity's impact upon the
Many-Coloured Land. This aggravated the split between tradi-
tionalist Tanu and those loyal to Aiken. The Encounters were
won by Firvulag heroes in an upset. Only a victory by Aiken
over the ogrish Firvulag general, Pallol One-Eye, could save the
day for the Tanu. Aiken told Nodonn and the traditionalists