"Christopher Rowley - Bazil 02 - A Sword For A Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowley Christopher)

PROLOGUE

It was when the bishop found a dead child talking to him, just before a
funeral service in the House of Auros in the city of Dzu that he knew he
could not escape.

At night the eyes bore into him, like lancing points of fire from the
dark. His allegiance was demanded. His beliefs made a mockery of. A
voice whispered in his dreams.

And it was true, and he knew it. His faith was gone. There was no
Auros, no benevolent center of the world. Even the House of Auros in
tumbledown Dzu was a fraud. It was, in fact, the ancient Temple of the
serpent god, Sephis. It had been turned over to the priests of Auros a few
centuries before, when Sephis lost his hold upon Ourdh and the tyrant rule
of Dzu was thrown down.

But the bishop of Auros in Dzu had dabbled in the Dark Arts. He had
delved in the black books of the Masters. He had begun experiments. To
escape censure from a disastrous situation involving a monkey, a highborn
young woman, and an attempt to exchange their consciousnesses, he had
taken a terrible oath to the mystery man who had saved him from
disaster.

Now they had come to him for their payment.

The dead child refused to be buried. It lingered in the bishopтАЩs
chambers.

тАЬThey are waiting for you,тАЭ it announced. It led him to the front door of
the Temple.

The skull-faced man who called himself the high priest, Odirak, was
waiting, accompanied by a man hidden in a voluminous black cloak.
Behind this figure came a girl of perhaps seventeen years, wearing nothing
but a cotton shift. She was slack-mouthed, benumbed by an enchantment.

The bishop let them into the House of Auros and then opened the heavy
gate that shut away the basement. They went down into the great
chamber of the pit, and the man in the cloak pulled back his hood. The
bishop quailed. The manтАЩs face ended at the nose, all below was a
glistening expanse of horn. The pale, naked scalp rose above eyes that
were like windows onto a place of fire.

The dead child giggled, and the bishopтАЩs skin crawled.

The bishop knew that this was a Mesomaster, most powerful of all the
acolytes of the Masters themselves. Never had the bishop dreamed that he
might come to this pass.