"Dan Parkinson - Dragonlance Tales - Cataclysm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parkinson Dan)

Being praise-singer to a bandit king was a thankless
and shabby job, they said.
Well, generally.
But Finn, they said, was different. Of course.
It was hard to keep from laughing. In the rationale of
such men, a bandit, a goblin, even a monster was
DIFFERENT when coin and a warm hearth were offered.
Finn, they claimed, had joined resolutely in the search
to lift a curse brought upon Caergoth and the surrounding
peninsula years ago by the fire-bringing Solamnics, Pyrrhus
Alecto and his son Pyrrhus Orestes. His search had entered
its fourth year, his seers and shamans telling him that the
curse would last "as long as Alecto's descendants lived," his
hirelings telling him always that they had just missed
catching Orestes. Desperate, Finn hoped that a
transforming hymn would lift the curse with its beauty and
magic.
The bards needled one another cynically, each asking
when they would write that certain song, make their
fortunes among the bandits. They all laughed the knowing
laughter of bards, then fell silent.
I leaned against the cold rock face, awaiting uncertain
audience. Pelicans and gulls wheeled over the breaking
tide, diving into the ardent waters as the sun settled over the
eastern spur of Ergoth, dark across the cape.
Carelessly, I touched the strings of the harp, felt in my
pockets for the poet's pen and ink. I had traveled hundreds
of miles to this stairwell, this audience. The pain of my
scars rose suddenly to a new and staggering level.
The song of the bards around me was skillful and
glittering and skeptical . . . and empty of the lines I sought.
I would have to brave the echoing caverns below Finn's
lair.
The druidess had told me that I could find the truth.
AND THE FINDING WOULD SAVE MY LIFE AND
MAKE THE PAST UNCHANGEABLE. The song had to be
here, or there was no song. And could the final pain of the
monster's acid be any worse than this perpetual burning?
"You'll have it, Father," I muttered into the dark of my
hood. "REDEEMED AND CONTINUED. The past will be
unchangeable. Whatever you have, it will be the truth. And
whatever I have, it will be better."

*****

Finn of the Dark Hand sat in a huge chair hewn from
the cavern wall. He looked hewn from stone himself, a
sleepless giant or a weathered monument set as a sign of
warding along the rocky peninsular coast. His right hand
was gloved in black, the reason known only to himself.