"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 2 - The Coral Kingdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

lay sprawled about like matchsticks, pushed outward as if some horrifying, destructive force had forged a
path between them.
Colleen gasped in horror. "What happened?" she shouted, clinging to her racing gelding.
Brigit didn't reply. She felt sick to her stomach, grimly determined to discover the source of this
abomination.
"LookтАФthe way the trees lie. Whatever did this moved on down the valley," observed Colleen crisply.
"Toward Chrysalis!"
The captain had reached the same conclusion, but to her, it held different significanceтАФnot so much
where the path was leading, as to where it came from. It originated higher up the valley to their left. . .
From the Fey-Alamtine.
They reached the vantage where they had rested on the climb, and Brigit gazed to the west in
uncomprehending shock. The once-shiny cliff no longer gleamed in the morning sunlight. In fact, there was
no cliff there to gleam! Instead, a wreckage of splintered obsidian lay at the foot of the slope, as if a
horrendous landslide or explosion had ripped open the mountain.
Brigit spurred her horse, and the fleet mare seemed to sprout wings, so gracefully did she sweep along
the forest trail. Colleen held as close as possible, but the gelding couldn't match the pace of her captain's
mare.
They reached a shelf in the descending valley, and the horses pounded down the winding trail with
abandon. Near the bottom, Brigit's mare reared back and the sister knight looked down, appalled, at the trail
before her.
A white horse lay there, dead for only moments judging by the steam rising from its freshly exposed
bowels. Something had scored a gory wound across the horse's midsection, nearly tearing the hapless beast
in two. The tattered remnants of the saddle remained, but there was no sign of the rider.
"Inger's horse," said the white-faced Colleen. She held her longbow across her saddle, her fear-widened
eyes darting back and forth among the surrounding trees.
A loud splintering sound reached them, and the Llewyrr felt the massive pain of trees, rended by some
awful force. Shrieks of horror, undeniably elven, rang from somewhere down the trail.
Immediately the two sister knights spurred their mounts into a gallop, frantic now to intercept the threat
that seemed to move like a landslide toward the heart of Synnoria. They ducked under branches, then lay
flat along the pitching backs of the racing steeds, thundering several miles in a blur of speed.
Finally they came through a grove of tall pines into the wide meadow of the trout farm, and here the
horses reared back, instinctively terrified.
The first thing that came into Brigit's mind was that a gigantic turtle had somehow appeared among the
Llewyrr. At a glance, the domed back, covered by a hard carapace, might have belonged to one of that
amphibious race.
But as it moved, the resemblance immediately vanished.
Three legs flexed beneath the beast, carrying it with bounding speed toward several fleeing elves. It
loomed over them, the size of a small barn, then scampered with shocking speed this way and that after the
terrified Llewyrr. Tentacles lashed outward, seizing the slight forms and dragging them to an unseen fate
beneath the monster's overhanging shell.
"The trout farm!" cried Colleen, but Brigit had already seen the damage. The beast stalked among the
buildings and sheds, smashing troughs of flowing water, reducing wooden buildings to splinters with a single
kick of a tree-sized leg. Panic-stricken Llewyrr fled in all directions. The knights saw several of them
seized by the monster's tentacles and dragged screaming to their doom.
"Let's go!" urged Brigit, spurring the frightened Talloth toward the rampaging beast. She wished for her
lance, though in her heart, she knew that even that steel-tipped shaft could do little more than prick the
monster's skin. Despite the hopelessness of their courageous gesture, Colleen raced at her side. Both of the
sister knights drew their swords, raising the blades in a wild attempt to distract the monster from its helpless
prey.
The beast must have sensed their approach, for it turned from the wreckage of a shed, where it had