"Mel Odom - Forgotten Realms - Lost Empires 01 - The Lost Library of Cormanthyr" - читать интересную книгу автора (Odom Mel)

"Get Verys to my side," Skyreach commanded.
"At once, milady." Scaif saluted, then tapped one of the warriors at his side on the shoulder. The warrior
took off immediately but was overtaken by a roil of dark seawater. Miraculously, the man grabbed the
railing around the central hold as he was washed across the deck, saving himself. He staggered to his feet
as Chal-ice of the Crowns twisted again, then seemed to drop into a bot-tomless pit.
"Captain Rinnah." Skyreach made her voice unforgiving, pulling much of her great-grandfather's wrath
into it.
The captain spun toward her.
When the ship bottomed out against the sea again, Skyreach thought for a moment that her legs weren't
going to be strong enough to hold her. The railing abraded her palm even inside the leather glove, promising
blisters on the morrow. She ignored the pain. She had never failed her great-grandfather while he was alive,
nor would she allow herself to fail Faimcir Glitterwing's memory. She pointed her long sword at the
approaching vessel and said, "Would you see your ship taken as a pirate's prize?"
The captain bared his teeth in a grimace of disgust. "Haven't you been listening to me, woman? We're
all dead. The men in that ship are only fooling themselves to even pretend to think other-wise."
"We're not dead until I say we're dead," Skyreach yelled back in a harsh voice. Lightning cascaded
across the dark heavens again, underscoring the terrible possibilities of her words. No one knew the
capability she hadтАФor was prepared to use. "Now, do you cap-tain this ship, or do I give your first mate a
field promotion?"
Chalice of the Crowns bucked again, surging up the next swell of the Trackless Sea. Water crashed
onto the decks, spilling over the prow this time. Then she was clear again for the moment, plung-ing deep
into another valley of waves.
Rinnah cast a hate-filled glance in Skyreach's direction, then turned and stalked off. He bellowed orders
between his cupped hands, managing the water-slick deck with effort. In response to his orders, sailors
clambered the rigging like monkeys. Sails were run up and let down. Cloth filled the rigging in broad
expanses of sheet, eclipsing the dark sky. The fabric cracked in the irresolute grip of the storm winds.
Skyreach braced herself as the sails took hold. The ship surged into the wind. Before, Chalice of the
Crowns had been a piece of flotsam trying to wait out the fury of the storm until calm returned. With the
sails filled out, the vessel was a live thing fighting to free itself from the trap it was in, running mad as it was
driven before the storm.
Rinnah scrambled up the stairs leading to the helm. He took the large wheel himself. Almost
immediately, Skyreach could feel the difference the man's hand made upon the tiller. Chalice of the
Crowns came about slowly, fighting the sea as it cut through the waves and gained speed. Gradually, her
prow came around, putting the wind behind her sails. The ship suddenly dropped again as the sea slipped
out from beneath her.
 A wave, fully as tall as any sea giant Skyreach had ever heard of in any tale, whipped across the deck.
The elven warrior lost her footing for a moment. Only her tight grip on the rigging kept her from being
swept overboard.
Her hand burning like she was holding live coals, Skyreach pulled herself back to her feet. Out across
the sea, the pirate ship drew even with them. White foam broke across the vessel's prow. Lightning split the
sky, igniting the metallic scale and cut glass encrusted visage of the Eye of the Deep that had been worked
into the prow. The beholder-kin lived only at great depths in the sea. The artist who had rendered the
reproduction had worked masterfully, making the obscene round body as large as a man, including the ten
eye-stalks, the great, staring, central eye above a slash filled with razor-sharp teeth.
Then the terrible sight was extinguished as the quick burst of illumination from the lightning disappeared.
Skyreach tightened the grip on her long sword. Squinting against the drumming rain that came as hard as
barbed darts, the elven warrior estimated the distance separating the two ships to be less than twenty
paces.
The pirate vessel closed, coming up alongside Chalice of the Crowns.
"Milady, I am here." Verys came to an uncertain stop at the railing beside Skyreach. Thin and nervous,