"Invasion Cycle - 02 - Planeshift" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

magnigoth gunwale above it had filled in. The rent was
healed.

Multani continued his work. What was a ship without a
figurehead? Wood flowed with waxlike ease, seeming to
pour itself into an invisible mold. A torso took shape,
feminine and muscular. A pair of powerful arms swept
dramatically backward. Wood formed a long mantle of hair
that twined vinelike about strong shoulders. A faceЧ
beautiful, mysterious, and clear eyedЧappeared within
those rampant locks. Any crew member who gazed on that
face would have thought the features belonged to Hanna,
former navigator of Weatherlight. Certainly, Multani had
used Hanna as a mental model. The woman he sought to
represent had Hanna's strength and courage and could
borrow Hanna's face, for she did not have a face of her
own. The woman was a goddess so had no face and all
faces.

Residing in every vital impulse of the living grain,
Multani shaped the likeness. He was sculptor and sculpture
both. In mere moments, the masterpiece was complete. He
did not need to step back to examine his work. He
inhabited it and knew its perfection.

It was just as well. He could not have seen the
figurehead anyway. Beyond the bow of Weatherlight was
only desert darkness.

The ship rested on her landing spines in the midst of
sandy Koilos. All around her spread a slumbering army.
The festival lanterns had been extinguished. The torch
stakes had long since burned out. Not a fire smoldered
among the coalition forces. SoldiersЧMetathran, human,
and elfЧslept in their tents. Dragons slumbered beneath
the canopy of stars. They slept like the dead, though these
were, in fact, the survivors. These mortals had stood

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J. Robert King
against hundreds of thousands of Phyrexian monsters, only
later to be laid low by a three-day victory celebration.
Wine and revelry. Mortals must be allowed their excesses.

Multani was no mortal. While elves sang, Multani had
mended a shattered keel. While humans danced, Multani
had grown longer, stronger spars. While Metathran slept,