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

before them. "We must have passed the trail somewhere below."
"That's the smartest suggestion I've heard in days!" agreed the halfling heartily.
"Nothing like a bit of climbing to get the blood flowing, though. Don't you agree?" said Hanrald, with a
hearty clap on the back for Keane.
The mage scowled but climbed stiffly to his feet. "This means we go down for a while, right?" he
checked.
"Due south," Brandon noted. "Until we figure out where the valley curved from east and west."
The descent passed quickly, though they moved with careful attention to their surroundings. Keane
constantly checked the magical emanations from the surrounding ridge, particularly the steep faces toward
the east and north, reporting that the intensity of the enchantment remained steady. Robyn studied her
surroundings each step of the way, seeking some feature that would trigger a memory. Brandon kept an
eye on the sun, carefully watching their direction of travel.
All of them noticed the gradual change in the terrain as the narrow draw slowly widened, and the cliff
walls rolled back to rounded ridges on either side. The ground leveled, and the stream beside them grew
placid, losing the urgency that had formerly carried it frothing from the heights. Now it meandered, deep
and murky, between earthen banks and grassy meadows.
"Look! We're going west now!" Brandon's voice carried the excitement of discovery, and the
significance of the news could not be underplayed.
"The valley appears to run straightтАФbut here it goes east and west, and a mile back it flows north to
south!" Alicia realized.
"That's the illusionтАФto make a curved valley appear to be straight!" Keane pointed out.
Robyn held up a hand, silencing the others instantly. They waited as the woman removed her staff from
its lashings to her saddle and gently placed the butt of the shaft on the ground. She closed her eyes and
murmured a brief phrase of a simple spell. It was an enchantment of detection, but unlike Keane's spell, it
didn't search for the presence of magic. Instead, she sought a far different thingтАФa thing she normally
would never have associated with Synnoria, except for words that the vision of the wolf had said to heron
the previous night.
Now she performed a spell to detect evil.
For a long while, the queen felt no triggering response, no indication of any presence that was other than
natural or benign. But then, just as she began to despair of success, a tiny flicker of darkness and dread
tugged at the fringes of her awareness.
Whatever it was, the malignancy remained distant. Yet even through the filter of several miles, she felt
the power of this evil, the terrible menace it represented.
Quickly she opened her eyes. The detection spell was a glowing spot in her subconscious, the sense of
direction compelling and accurate. She knew which way to go now.
"The route to Synnoria must lieтАФthere!" Robyn pointed, surprising even herself with her certainty.
They followed the direction she indicated to look skeptically at a tiny rivulet of water trilling over a series
of precipitous waterfalls, spilling from a lofty height to join the stream before them from the opposite bank.
"Just crossing the river to get over there looks impossible!" Alicia objected. "How could you have come
that wayтАФon horses?"
"I know I was never under water," Pawldo inserted. "That's the kind of thing I tend to remember!"
"The crossing is not quite impossible," Hanrald announced. The earl had wandered over to the
streambed, and now he gestured to the ground at his feet. "There's a ford hereтАФnot very obvious or well
used. In fact, it looks as though someone doesn't want it to be found!"
The others joined him, and they all saw that several flat rocks had been placed to form steps leading
down into the stream. A ridge of gravel several feet wide barely visible under the water, led to a similar
avenue on the opposite bank. The ford itself looked to be no more than three feet deep, though much
deeper water approached, and flowed away from, the spot.
"That's it!" Robyn cried. "We crossed hereтАФor at a ford just like this! I remember the steps leading up
out of the water."