"Mithgar - Hel's Crucible - 02 - Into The Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKiernan Dennis L)

INTO THE FIRE

H╚L'S CRUCIBLE BOOK 2

Dennis L. McKiernan
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As the Foul Folk spread their evil across the kingdoms of Mithgar, two Warrows, bound by a pledge to a dying swordsman, continue their venture into the very jaws of the conflict ravaging the world. Yet Tip and Beau do not travel alone.


Beset on all sides by creatures of legend, by Elves, Dwarves, mages, a pack of Silver Wolves and their mysterious leader, warrior maidens, and Hidden Ones, Tip and Beau struggle to keep their world from falling into darkness as the vast armies of Modru lead them into the very crucible of Hшl....


Into the Fire brings all the wonder of Mithgar to rich, evocative life in a triumphant story of magic, adventure, and danger that confirms Dennis L. McKiernan's status as one of today's most imaginative masters of fantasy.


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AUTHOR'S NOTES


Into the Fire is the second book of the duology of Hшl's Crucible. Along with the first book, Into the Forge, it tells the tale of the Great War of the Ban, as seen through the eyes of two Warrows, Tipperton Thistledown and Beau Darby.

It is a story which begins in the year 2195 of the Second Era of Mithgar, a time when the Rupt are free to roam about in daylight as well as night, although it is told that they prefer to do their deeds in darkness rather than under the sun.

The story of the Ban War was reconstructed from several sources, not the least of which were the Thistledown Lays. I have in several places filled in the gaps with assumptions of my own, but in the main the tale is true to its source material.

As occurs in other of my Mithgarian works, there are many instances where in the press of the moment, the Humans, Mages, Elves, and others spoke in their native tongues; yet to avoid burdensome translations, where necessary I have rendered their words in Pellarion, the Common Tongue of Mithgar. However, in several cases I have left the language unchanged, to demonstrate the fact that many tongues were found throughout Mithgar. Additionally, some words and phrase's do not lend themselves to translation, and these I've either left unchanged or, in special cases, I have enclosed in angle brackets a substitute term which gives the "flavor" of the word (e.g... and the like). Additionally, sundry words may look to be in error, but indeed are correctЧe.g., DelfLord is but a single word though a capital L nestles among its letters.

The Elven language of Sylva is rather archaic and formal. To capture this flavor, I have properly used thee and thou, hast, dost, and the like; however, in the interest of readability, I have tried to do so in a minimal fashion, eliminating some of the more archaic terms.

For the curious, the w in Rwn takes on the sound of uu (w is after all a double-u), which in turn can be said to sound like oo (as in spoon). Hence, Rwn is not pronounced Renn, but instead is pronounced Roon, or Rune.


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SYNOPSIS


This is the second part of Hшl's Crucible.


In the first part, Into the Forge, on a winter's night Tipperton Thistledown, a Warrow miller, was awakened from a sound sleep by a skirmish on his very doorstone. In the battle a lone man managed to kill all nine of the Foul Folk foe, but he himself was terribly wounded. Tip dragged the man into the mill, bandaged him as well as he could, and, during the process, the man gave Tip a small, drab, pewter coin on a thong and told him, "Go east . . . warn all ... take this to Agron." Tip didn't know who or what Agron was, but didn't question the man, and instead ran to get a healer, another Warrow, Beau Darby. When they got back to the mill, the man's throat had been cut by Spawn who had come while Tip was away, Foul Folk whose tracks then headed on westward into the Dellin Downs.

As Tip and Beau built a pyre on which to cremate all of the slain, a balefire burned afar on Beacontor, calling for muster.

Men from the nearby town of Twoforks, seeing the smoke of the funeral pyre, came to investigate and, together with the Warrows. they discovered that the dead man's slain horse bore the brand of the High King.