"Sniegoski, Thomas E - Outcast - 04 - Wurm War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sniegoski Thomas E)
"Come on, all of you! "Telford shouted, and he started at a run toward the Forge.
Many of the miners followed, but others took that as their signal to flee in earnest. Instead of hurrying away, they were sprinting, perhaps thinking to take shelter in some cave or other. None of them ran toward the village. It would be in flames soon enough.
Verlis took flight, keeping pace with Telford and the miners courageous enough not to run for their lives. The Wurm glanced back repeatedly, and he saw dark figures against the sky, Raptus's soldiers at last taking flight. Black smoke rose on the horizon, the first of the huts now burning in the small village encampment the mages had built.
Telford led them to the Forge. The workers there were all moving outside, curiosity and fear etched in their faces. Verlis saw Charna Tayvis, the Forge supervisor, but her focus was on Telford.
"What's going on, Walter?" Charna demanded. She was a large, powerful-looking woman, her face covered in the dirt and grime of her labors. The blacksmiths grumbled behind her, eager for an answer as well.
"We're under attack. Raptus has broken through."
The blacksmiths looked horrified, as well they should have. Raptus was a brutal savage and a cunning general, utterly without mercy. Verlis knew this from experience. But Telford did not allow fear to fester.
"Gather up whatever you've already forged, Malleum weapons, helmets, whatever there is," he instructed the smiths. "Not a piece is to be wasted."
Charna stepped forward, removing the heavy gloves from her hands. "A good many pieces were shipped out to Arcanum two days past," she said. "Enough to fortify a battalion. All that's left here is what we've worked on since then."
One of the miners, the man who had been operating Timothy's digging machine, came forward. Fear shone in his eyes, and Verlis could smell the stink of panic seeping from his pores.
"And what then?" he asked, gazing up toward the rim of the small valley in which they toiled. The rumbling was louder nowЧcloser. "Once we gather the weaponsЧwhat then?"
One of the blacksmiths had left the Forge carrying a weapon he had obviously been working on. It was a Malleum spear, its head tapering to a nasty point. Forged from this metal, it would pierce even the toughest of Wurm hides, and their armor as well.
Telford took the weapon from him and hefted it in his hands. "We use them for what they were intended," he said in a forceful voice, eyes searching out every face in the crowd. "We use them to fight for our lives."
Miners and smiths alike dispersed quickly, rushing into the Forge to arm themselves.
"How long before they are upon us?" Telford asked, coming to stand at Verlis's side, spear still in hand.
"Not long," Verlis growled, watching the sky begin to darken with black smoke as the entire village was set aflame. Ominous winged figures cruised amid the smoke, the flapping of hundreds of pairs of wings sounding like the roll of thunder. "Not long at all."
Timothy knelt by the body of Leander Maddox, his friend and mentor, who had looked out for him since the death of his father. The mage had been a huge man both in stature and in heart, but he seemed so small now, there on the ground, no life left within him, no spirit, no magic. Cassandra had gone quickly back up to the room from which they had descended into this secret chamber and brought back the lantern of hungry fire that Timothy used. This, to him, was pure fire. Not magical. Not ghostfire, made from the souls of dead mages. This world had always perceived it as the rechanneling of magical energy to useful purpose, but Timothy had discovered that the ghosts of mages were trapped in the fire, unable to go on to their final reward, and he thought it criminally tragic. Now Cassandra knelt by his side, hungry fire lantern in her hand, and shared in his sorrow over the death of the man who had been their teacher and protector. Not far away stood Ivar, last surviving warrior of the Asura tribe. He had suffered injuries in the battle with Alhazred, but he stood with his hands together as though saying a prayer over Leander's remains, and he muttered a kind of incantation under his breath, a chant to some higher power.
Cassandra placed the lantern on the floor beside him. "I'm so sorry," she said, bowing her head. "I knew him only a short time, but long enough to know he was a great man. Arcanum has lost a treasure today."
"He will be missed," Ivar said, his voice raspy and weak. "More than ever, the Parliament of Mages needs leaders like Leander Maddox."
Timothy heard their words of solace, but could not find his own voice. His mind was filled with memories of the man, of the kindness in his eyes, of the quiet strength that he had and that he inspired in others. Timothy recalled the first time he had seen Leander as he came through the magical doorway from Terra and into the world where the boy had been hidden away at birth due to his affliction. Even then, at that first look, he had known that the burly, bearded mage with the wild mane of red hair was a friend. Leander had been manipulated by evil, but in his heart, he had always remained loyal to the memory of Timothy's father, Argus Cade, who had been Leander's own teacher.
With a long, mournful breath, Timothy finally summoned the words in his heart. He held Leander's cold, stiff fingers in his own. "He always felt responsible, somehow, for the way the mages treated me. He blamed himself for their fear, their ignorance. I was born on Terra, but I think he wished that he had left me where he'd found meЧto spare me from all that I've been exposed to since stepping through that doorway into this world."
Timothy studied Leander's pale face. If not for the spatters of blood that dappled the man's cheek, it would have appeared that the great mage was merely sleeping.
Cassandra put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
"He couldn't have been more wrong," Timothy said. "Sure, there are times when I wish I could run back to Patience and hide, but then I think about all I'd be giving up. My island home seems so ... insignificant after seeing what exists beyond it."
Leaning forward, he placed a kiss on the man's brow and climbed to his feet, still fighting to not be overpowered by grief. He felt Cassandra and Ivar's concerned eyes on him, but only nodded to confirm that he would be all right.
Across the vast chamber, a tapestry adorned with the crest of the Order of Alhazred hung on the wall. Timothy went over and tore it down from the place where it had likely hung for centuries. As he crossed the room with the tapestry, he made a promise to himself that he would not suppress his grief forever, that he would give himself time to truly mourn the passing of his friend, but for the moment there were things to be dealt with that had to take priority over his anguish.
"Tim?" Cassandra asked. "Are you all right?"
"Not even close," he said, draping the tapestry over Leander's still form. "But now that the horror of Alhazred's schemes is done with, I will be. Everything will be better now. It has to be. Leander died to make it so."
He said a silent good-bye to Leander, then went to Ivar, whose face masked the pain he must have been in after the conflict with Alhazred. The dark wizard had drained some of Ivar's spirit, and it would take time for him to recover. As a child on the Island of Patience, Ivar had been his friend, and as great a teacher to him then as Leander would later become. All his life his friends had looked out for him. Now it was time for Timothy to return the favor.
"Let's get you to a healer," Timothy said. "And then we need to let the others know what happened here today."
Cassandra nodded in agreement, picking up the lantern from the floor to light their way up the stairs that led to a storage room where the secret passage to Alhazred's hidden lair was first discovered.
It seemed as though it took three times as long to climb the stairs as it had to descend them, and Timothy spent this time pondering the future of the Parliament of Mages and the world of Terra. Yes, Alhazred had been destroyed, but that did little to squelch the fear that he harbored over the potential threat of invasion from Draconae. Timothy shivered as he recalled his time in the Wurm world as Raptus's prisoner.
"We're almost there, Ivar," Timothy said, helping support his friend as they made their ascent of the winding stone staircase.
As they rounded a corner, a large shape was silhouetted in the doorway above them, and a bird fluttered over it. In the midst of his pain, Timothy found a spark of comfort at the sight, for the silhouette was that of Sheridan, the mechanical man he had built, with Edgar, the black-feathered rook who had been his father's familiar. Timothy was no mage, but Edgar was his familiar now.
"Caw! Caw!" Edgar cried. "It's them! By the tail feathers of my ancestors, it's them!"
"Timothy! You're alive!" Sheridan said, extending his segmented metal arms down the staircase to assist them in their climb. He clanked as he moved, and steam hissed from the release valve on the side of his head.
Another day, Timothy might have made a joke of Sheridan's pointing out the obvious, but there was nothing amusing in the mechanical man's concern for him. Not all those who had descended into the belly of SkyHaven to combat Alhazred were coming back alive.
Cassandra went first, with the lantern, and then Timothy helped Ivar through the door into the storage chamber, barraged by questions from their anxious friends. There were half a dozen mages in the room, acolytes of the Order of Alhazred, but though Cassandra was their grandmaster, as a sign of respect they would stay away from Timothy unless they were forced to confront him.
"Thank Zephyrus you're safe," said Caiaphas, the navigation mage who had served Leander long and well. Those who had studied that specialty all wore a distinctive veil that covered most of their faces, leaving only their eyes visible, but Timothy could see the relief in him. He could almost not bear to meet that gaze.
Caiaphas frowned and peered back down into the darkness of the stairwell. "But where is Master Leander?"
"Yeah," Edgar croaked, tucking his wings back and tilting his head, looking down from his perch on Sheridan's shoulder. "Where is he? Guarding Alhazred orЧ"
They all then saw the look on Timothy's face, and their expressions tore at his heart. Just let me be strong now, he thought. Just let me be strong for my friends.
"Alhazred is truly dead now," he said. "But Leander ... if not for him arriving when he did, none of us would have made it out of there alive. But the cost . . . ," Timothy said, prying the terrible words from his mouth. "Leander was killed."
They were all thunderstruck, each of them falling silent. Caiaphas closed his eyes and turned away, hanging his head. Edgar fluttered his wings, beak opening as though trying to find something to say. Sheridan's glowing red eyes dimmed and his arms hung at his sides as though he had shut himself down. The other Alhazred mages muttered among themselves, some of them gazing at Timothy with open suspicion.
"What went on down there, kid?" Edgar asked at last, flapping his wings as he flew up to a new perch atop Sheridan's head. "It must've been awful. The whole place started falling. We thought it was the end for all of us."
"It was terrifying," the mechanical man agreed. "How can such a thing happen, that spells so powerful and intricate could falter?"
The acolytes watched Timothy with fear in their eyes, as if they knew that he was somehow responsible. The un-magician was to blame.
And they were right.
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