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

become a scholar in the ivory towers of Teresia City, a
witness of the land-based power the sylex had unleashed.
The residents of Terisia City had sacrificed half their
number to keep the bowl out of his or Mishra's hands. Half
hadn't been enough. Loran had lost the sylex and the use of
her right arm to Ashnod's infamous inquiries, but the rest
of her had survived. Urza had approached Loran warily,
disguised as a woman who'd lost her husband and both her
sons in what he bitterly described as "the brothers' cursed
folly."
Loran was a competent sage and a better person than
Urza hoped to be, but she was no match for his jeweled
eyes. As she'd heated water on a charcoal brazier, he'd
stolen her memories.
The sylex, of course, was gone, consumed by the forces
it had released, and Loran's memory of it was imperfect.
That was Ashnod's handiwork. The torturer had taken no
chances with her many victims. Loran recalled a copper bowl
incised with Thran glyphs Urza had forgotten until he saw
them again in Loran's memory. Some of the glyphs were sharp
enough that he'd recognize them if he saw them again, but
most were blurred.
He could have sharpened those memories, his eyes had
that power, but Urza knew better than to make the
suggestion. Loran would sooner die than help him, so they
drank tea, watched a brilliant sunset, then went their
separate ways.
Urza had learned enough. The Thran, the vanished race
who'd inspired his every artifact, had made the sylex, and
the sylex had
saved Dominaria from Phyrexia. Although mysteries
remained, there was symmetry, and Urza had hoped that
symmetry would be enough to halt his dreams. He'd resumed
his planeswalking. It had taken five years-Urza was nothing
if not a determined, even stubborn, man-before he'd
admitted to himself that his hopes were futile. A year ago,
he'd returned to Dominaria, to Argoth itself, which he'd
avoided since the war ended. He'd found the ruined hilltop
where he'd unleashed the land's fury and pain. He'd found
Tawnos's coffin.
Tawnos had spent five years sealed in stasis within the
coffin. For him, it was as if the war hadn't yet ended and
the cataclysm hadn't yet happened. The crisp images on the
surface of Tawnos's awakened mind had been battlefield
chaos, Ashnod's lurid hair, and the demon from Phyrexia.
"... if this thing is here ..." Tawnos had recalled his
erstwhile lover's, onetime torturer's words.
Ashnod's statement had implied, at least to Tawnos and
from him to Urza, that she'd recognized the demon: a man-
tall construction of strutted metal and writhing, segmented