"02.Planeswalker" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

were merely a handful of the infinite planes of the
multiverse, any of which could be explored and exploited by
an immortal planeswalker. She taught Urza to change his
shape at will and to comprehend thought without the
inconvenience of language or translation. But even among
planeswalkers Urza was unique. For all her knowledge,
Meshuvel couldn't see the multiverse as Urza saw it. Her
eyes were an ordinary brown, and she'd never heard of the
Thran. Meshuvel could tell Urza nothing about his eyes,
except that she feared them; and feared them so much that
she tried to snare him in a time pit. When that failed, she
fled the plane where they'd been living.
Urza had thought about pursuing Meshuvel, more from
curiosity than vengeance, but the plane she'd called
Dominaria-the plane where he'd been born, the plane he'd
nearly destroyed- kept its claws in his mind. Five years
after the cataclysm, Dominaria had pulled him home.
Urza's descent ended on a wind-eroded plateau. Clouds
thickened, turned gray. Cold wind, sharp with ice and dust,
plastered long strands of ash-blond hair across Urza's
eyes. Winter had come earlier than Urza had expected,
another unwelcome gift from the sylex. A few more days and
the glyphs would have been buried until spring.
Four millennia ago, the Thran had transformed the
plateau into a fortress, an isolated stronghold wherein
they'd made their final stand. Presumably, it once had a
name; perhaps the glyphs proclaimed it still, but no one
had cracked that enigmatic code, and no one cracked it that
afternoon. Urza's jeweled eyes gave him no insight into
their makers' language. Fifty years ago, in his natural
youth, Urza and his brother had named the great cavern
within the plateau Koilos, and Koilos it remained.
Koilos had been ruins then. Now the ruins were
themselves ruined, but not merely by the sylex. The
brothers and their war had wrought this damage, plundering
the hollow plateau for Thran secrets, Thran powerstones.
In truth, Urza had expected worse. Mishra had held this
part of Terisiare for most of the war, and it it pleased
Urza to believe that his brother's allies had been more
destructive than his own allies had been. In a dusty corner
of his heart, Urza knew that had he been able to ravage
Koilos, even the shadows would have been stripped from the
stones, but Mishra's minions had piled their rubble neatly,
almost reverently. Their shredded tents still flapped in
the rising wind. Looking closer, Urza realized they'd left
suddenly and without their belongings, summoned, perhaps,
to Argoth, as Urza had summoned his followers for that
final battle five years earlier.
Urza paused on the carefully excavated path. He closed
his eyes and shuddered as memories flooded his mind.