"Michael Moorcock - The Runestaff 3 - The Sword of The Dawn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

property."

"I will ride for Londra instantly," Meliadus said.
"For there I may consult our sorcerer-scientists and
discover a means of hunting out my foes. Farewell,
my lords."

He dragged at his horse's reins, turning the beast and
galloping back down the hill, watched by his peers.

The beast-masks moved together in the firelight. "His
singular mentality could destroy us all," whispered one.

"What matter?" chuckled Shenegar Trott, "so long
as all is destroyed with us ..."

The answering laughter was wild, ringing from the
jeweled helms. It was insane laughter, tinged as much
with self-hatred as with hatred of the world.

For this was the great power of the Lords of the
Dark Empire, that they valued nothing on all the Earth,
no human quality, nothing within or without them-
selves. The spreading of conquest and desolation, of
terror and torment, was their staple entertainment, a
means of employing their hours until their spans of life
were ended. For them, warfare was merely the most
satisfactory way of easing their ennui ...

Chapter Two

THE FLAMINGOES
DANCE

AT DAWN, WHEN clouds of giant scarlet flamin-
goes rose from their nests of reeds and wheeled through
the sky in bizarre ritual dances, Count Brass would
stand on the edge of the marsh and stare over the water
at the strange configurations of dark lagoons and tawny
islands that seemed to him like hieroglyphs in some
primeval language.

The ontological revelations that might exist in these
patterns had always intrigued him, and of late he had
taken to studying the birds, reeds and lagoons, attempt-
ing to divine the key to this cryptic landscape.

The landscape, he thought, was coded. In it he might
find the answers to the dilemma of which even he was
only half-conscious; find, perhaps, the revelation that