"Douglas Niles - Forgotten Realms - Moonshae 03 - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niles Douglas)

to eat. It came upon a region of utter desolation, a place that made the past
reaches of barren land seem fertile. The predator flew north, over a stagnant
brown stream. It crossed a reach of dead, fallen timber.
Finally it came to a small pond. The water was surrounded by twenty stone
statues, remarkably lifelike human figures in various poses of battle. The
surface of the pond itself was an impenetrable black.
But what was that? The eagle saw, or imagined, motion below that flat,
lightless surface. It could have been a trout, swimming complacently in the
center of the pond. It could have been anything.
The bird tucked its wings and plummeted toward the shadow. The water rushed up
to meet it, and the true nature of the dark shape became visible. The eagle
shrieked
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DARK WELL
and struck outward with its wings, slowing but not halting its descent. One
claw, still extended to clutch the imagined prey, touched the surface of the
black water.
A crackling hiss broke the silence, and for a moment the eagle froze, outlined
in blue light. In another instant, the bird was gone, though no ripple
disturbed the surface of the dark pond. A lone white feather, caught by an
errant breath of wind, drifted upward and fluttered forlornly to settle upon
the muddy shore of the Darkwell.
Bhaal, god of murder, relished the eagle's death. Though he still dwelt in his
fiery bier upon the distant and hostile plane of Gehenna, the minor snuffing
of life in a place unimaginably remote was power transmitted directly to his
foul essence.
Such was the power of the Darkwell. And such was the power of Bhaal.
The patron god of any who would slay another of his kind, Bhaal found
plentiful worshipers among the humans and other creatures of the many worlds.
Foremost among them were the people of the Forgotten Realms.
It was in the Realms that the eagle flew, and died, and it was in the Realms
that Bhaal's most powerful minions had been fought and bested by these humans
who called themselves the Ffolk. Now Bhaal focused his entire baneful nature
on the land claimed by these humans. Now one servant, a cleric of great power
and even greater evil, still remained to do his bidding.
Slowly Bhaal's vengeance took form. The humans who obsessed him would die, but
only after everything they loved had died before them. He himself would see to
that. No longer would he trust his revenge to the talents of his minions.
To this end, Bhaal fostered the Darkwell.
A deep laugh rumbled in his cavernous breast as he pondered the history of the
pool. Only a month before, it had been a crystalline symbol of hope and
purity, a Moonwell, sacred shrine of the goddess Earthmother. Her body was
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DOUGLAS NILES
the earth itself, but her spirit resided primarily in pools such as
thisтАФclear, unspoiled water blessed with the benign enchantment of the goddess
Earthmother.
This had been her most sacred well, but now the might of Bhaal, coupled with
the deadly skills of his servant, the cleric Hobarth, had desecrated and
polluted the water so that it no longer resembled its former state. Indeed,