"Douglas Niles - Druidhome 3 - The Druid Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

First Printing: March, 1993
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-61080

98765432

ISBN: 1-56076-568-2

TSR, Inc. TSR Ltd.
201 Sheridan Springs Rd. 120 Church End, Cherry Hinton
Lake Geneva, WI 53147 Cambridge CB1 3LB
U.S.A United Kingdom
For "Uncle Jim"
 Prologue
She ran as fast as she could, down a corridor walled with black mirrors. The passage stretched to
obsidian infinity before and behind her. An intersection broke the smooth perfection, two side corridors
leading to more infinities, more impossible distances.
Panic tore at her chest, making her heart pound and her throat dry. Which way? Somehow she
understood that it really didn't matter. She darted to the left, the soles of her soft leather boots pounding the
smooth floor, the steady cadence the only sound in this eternal maze of nothingness.
That, and the rasping of her breath and the thunderous beating of her straining heart. How could that
vital muscle possibly keep her alive, possibly contain the explosive pressure of the blood in her veins? She
knew, as instinctively as she understood everything else, that it could not.
Another intersection... another frantic turn, between the lines of blackness, the two planes of wall
merging into a spot of darkness in the distance. She staggered wearily, her feet shuffling and stumbling until
she sprawled headlong onto the marble floor. Astonishingly, her rough fall caused no pain. Indeed, it was
more as if she had plummeted into the nest of a warm feather bed, encased by protective down and
sheltered against a supernatural chill.
But then she raised her eyes. Still the black walls stretched into the distance, merging into nothing before
and behind. Yet, for the first time, she sensed that she wasn't alone within this dim matrix. SomeoneтАФ
somethingтАФlurked here with her.
She knew, with a dull and hopeless sense of terror, that this presence, this being, awaited her.
Desperately she scrambled to her feet, slumping against the wall, sliding back along her tracks. She
turned and once again broke into a shambling run, the black walls sliding past as she retraced her steps,
fleeing the unseen presence, the potent menace she felt in the very pit of her stomach.
She returned to the intersection and stumbled through it, continuing down the passage that was identical
to a dozen, a hundred other corridors that had entrapped her during this eternal flight. She wanted only to
put that ominous presence behind her.
But as she ran, the threatening aura changed. No longer did it menace her from behind. Instead, once
more, she knew beyond any doubt that she approached it.
Stopping on her heels, she spun around again. The intersection! She'd go back there, take a different
branch! There had to be a way to evade this thing! Stumbling with exhaustion, leaning against the smooth
wall for support, once more she retraced her steps, coming to the adjoining passages to the right and left...
but now there was a difference.
Where there had once been four corridors, she now found sixтАФthree pairs, angling off to either side like
the limbs of a six-pointed star. She didn't hesitate, fearing all the while the evil drawing inexorably near. She
plunged down the closest of the right-hand passages, though the aching strain of her lungs pleaded with her
to pause, to rest.
She felt it again, that horror, and now she sensed it behind herтАФand creeping inevitably, dolorously
closer with every passing moment. Opening her mouth, she tried to scream, but no sound issued forth