"Sniegoski, Thomas E - Outcast - 04 - Wurm War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sniegoski Thomas E)

He turned toward the Voice and bowed. "Kind thoughts to you this most troubling of days," Romulus grumbled.
"On this and all days," she replied with a bow of her own. "Will you speak to us of our defense, and how we will rid our world of this heinous threat?"
"I will," he replied, turning to face his silent audience. "Kind thoughts to you all," he said, not expecting the traditional response, given the circumstances. "Our world is under attack, and it is time for us to decide how we will react."
The grandmasters had at last begun to pay attention. Most of them returned to their seats in the Parliamentary chamber.
"As you are all aware, we were warned that such an attack could be coming. Timothy Cade has been to Draconae and brought back a clan of Wurm who returned to this world because they were being exterminated by the followers of the tyrant Raptus. With Verlis, head of that clan, the Cade boy brought word that Raptus was a hate-filled, merciless creature, and that he was attempting to shatter the Divide and invade. They want vengeance for the injustices done to their people."
Romulus watched the faces of the members of Parliament. Many of them scowled at the mention of the Cade boy. Once, Romulus would have reacted the same way, but the un-magician had more than proven his courage. Timothy was an extremely controversial subject on the floor of Parliament. The boy scared them, and rightfully so, but he just may have been their best hope for dealing with this threat.
"Timothy helped to create a tenuous truce between the Parliament of Mages and Verlis's clan, and so we have Wurm allies in our impending war against Raptus's army. But here is the question. Can we put our trust in this boy, invisible to the matrix? Do we trust Timothy Cade with what could very well be the fate of our world?"
The members of Parliament were on their feet in a heartbeat, waving their arms and wailing silently.
"Perhaps it is time to give them back their voices," Romulus suggested to Alethea Borgia. "They should be allowed to express their opinions."
The Voice raised her bone staff, whispered something Romulus could not hear, and a rumble filled the great hall. This was one of the powers unique to the Voice of Parliament and none of them could combat it. Now, though, the churning cloud of magical energy was dispersed.
"The power of speech is yours once more, my friends, but I will not hesitate to deprive you of it again if this debate is not conducted in an orderly fashion."
The grandmasters heeded the Voice's warning, glancing about respectfully. There was a hierarchy of power and seniority, based on how long each had served as grandmaster, and they observed that hierarchy now. After a moment Grandmaster Aloysius of the Spiral Guild stood.
"How can we possibly trust the boy?" he demanded. The man was rotund and red faced with anger. "Son of Argus Cade he may be, but he is not a part of our world. He was raised on a parallel plane, no more one of us than the Wurm themselves."
Aloysius looked around for support. Many of the members nodded in agreement, urging him on, some clearly impatient to have their own turn to speak. "The boy has thwarted us at every turn. He was responsible for the death of one of our most illustrious grandmasters, and broke a Wurm criminal free from the prison of Abbadon. It is a pity that the Parliament acted so harshly with Constable Grimshaw, dismissing him from his duties, for he was correct. Timothy Cade and all he represents should be locked away, and the spell to free him forgotten."
A roar went up from the assemblage, each of them fighting to be noticedЧto be recognized so they could have their moment. The Voice clacked her staff on the floor once, and they settled down somewhat, though the debate continued.
"Half truths at best," Romulus boomed. "Yes, at one time Grandmaster Nicodemus was a respected member of our Parliament. But there can be no denying that his true nature was abhorrent. He was a villain and a traitor and a murderer. And if not for the boy, we would never have learned the truth."
Mistress Belladonna of the Order of Strychnos rose from her seat, a striking and bewitchingly beautiful figure clad in robes of the most vibrant green, a barely noticeable glance to either side enough to quiet the mouths of the clamorous guild members seated around her.
"Lord Romulus, from your tone I take it that you believe we ought to trust Timothy Cade. Yet you have been one of the most vocal opponents of the boy. To what may we attribute such a change?"
Lord Foxheart leaped to his feet. "Isn't it obvious? The boy has clouded his mind!"
There were mocking chuckles from those who found the Malleus Guild's grandmaster absurd, but there were also grumbling nods of agreement from some members. Romulus had to restrain himself from the urge to reduce Foxheart to a pile of charred bones.
Instead he turned to the Voice. "May I show them?"
"I think we must," she replied, and passed her hand over the top of her bone staff. A crystalline shape twirled in the air, throwing colors as it reflected the light of the chamber.
With a gentle puff of her breath, the Voice sent the crystal drifting across the stage toward Romulus. He held his hand out, even as the crystal resolved into an image of fire, of Wurm raiders in flight, wielding swords and breathing liquid flame. Of slaughter and destruction.
"This is Tora'nah," Romulus announced.
The images were nightmarish to behold: an army of Wurm filling the sky, descending on the mining operation. And all the while the voice of a guild member could be heard. "Help us, please help us."
Then one of the Wurm warriors alighted on the ground just feet away from the mage who had recorded the frantic message.
The creature was terrifying to behold, clad in pitted armor the color of dried blood. He opened his mouth as if to scream, spewing a stream of fire. A piercing shriek of agony filled the air, and the transmission went black.
The hall was deathly quiet as the crystal dissolved, raining down to the floor like so much dust.
"You ask me how I can trust the boy and his Wurm allies?" Romulus said. "After seeing such as this, how can I afford not to?"
CHAPTER THREE
They were slowing down.
And to slow down, Verlis knew, was to admit defeat and accept death.
The cold, biting winds of the Barrens swirled around them, kicking up razor-sharp slivers of ice that did little damage to his scaled hide, but left bleeding scratches on the exposed flesh of the surviving blacksmiths and miners of Tora'nah.
Fifteen had left the storage shed at the mining operation and raced for the portal between worlds, besieged by Raptus's vicious soldiers. The Wurm warriors had attacked with swords and fire, death on the wing, but as Verlis had predicted, they had all refused to re-enter Draconae. Still, the escape had been costly. Of the original fifteen, five had been killed before crossing over and two had died since then from wounds sustained during their exodus. Now only eight remained.
But even those eight were in peril from the unforgiving environment of Draconae, the wind and ice and the bone-deep chill. The night would be even worse.
"We must move faster," Verlis called to Telford over the howling winds.
The landscape of Draconae was cruel and inhospitable, ice barrens and mountains cloaked in constant blizzard, save in the areas where volcanic activity had burst up through the earth and created small oases of blistering tropical heat. Verlis wondered, as he often had while living on this cruel world, if the mages of old had chosen it intentionally, if they had secretly hoped in their blackened hearts that the place of banishment, now called Draconae, would eventually kill the Wurm. If that was indeed their intention, then the mages had not known their enemies well at all. For the Wurm were survivors, and this harsh land had only served to make them stronger, and in the case of Raptus and those who followed him, angrier.
Telford nodded in response to Verlis's urgings, pulling the collar of his jacket up around his neck. Ice and snow clung to his hair, and the man was shivering from the elements as he turned to the surviving workers.
"Come on, now," he yelled, his voice barely audible over the roar of the rushing winds. "We need to speed things up before ..."
The smiths and miners slowed to a stop. What a ragtag group they made. The Malleum armor hung on their trembling frames as though they were children wearing their fathers' wares of war. Frost covered their features, and their breath froze almost before it could leave their blue-tinged lips.
"No farther," a burly smith cried out, stumbling forward to stand in front of the others, his head covered in ice and snow.
Verlis had learned that the man's name was Burtlett. He had been the assistant foreman at the metal forge, but would now be foreman. Charna Tayvis had been killed during the exodus from Tora'nah. She had been the first to fall, distracting Raptus's soldiers by running away from the group, goading the Wurm to pursue her while the others made their escape from the valley. Verlis had gained an entirely new respect for the human species, and their potential for sacrifice, this dayЧone that he would not soon forget.
"We're going back," Burtlett said, planting his spear into the frozen ground before him in defiance. "I've decidedЧwe've decided that if we're going to die, we'd rather die back there, where it's warm."
Verlis noticed the other smiths and miners glancing nervously at one another, and had to wonder how much they had actually participated in making this decision.
They had all fought bravely. Though he himself had been engaged in savage combat with his brethren, Verlis had seen how valiantly the humans had waged their battle, even as they fled for their lives. The Malleum armor protected them from the razorsharp points of swords, spears, and knives, and also deflected the spells the Wurm sorcerers cast against them. Now that he had borne witness to this, he had begun to believe that with the Malleum, the mages of Terra truly stood a chance against Raptus and his army. Fortunately much armor and weaponry would already have arrived in Arcanum from the earlier shipment. But every piece would be vital to the war effort. He had to get this dwindling group of survivors safely back to their world.
"No more of you will die," Verlis said, striding toward them. He pulled his wings tighter around his body to protect himself from the biting winds. "On the spirits of my ancestors, I promise you this."
"You're just as cold as we are," Burtlett argued. "You can't protect us from something that will eventually kill you as well."
Without a word Verlis stepped back, opened his mouth, and vomited a blazing gout of liquid flame onto the icy ground. The fire blazed, throwing off powerful warmth. The smiths and miners were drawn to the small conflagration, warming themselves, and seeming to take some inspiration from its invigorating heat. Though it made him colder, depleting his own inner warmth, Verlis knew that he had to give them hope.
"I will die before allowing the elements here to take you," he said with a growl. "To go back to the camp will surely mean your end."
The fire began to shrink, having nothing to burn, and he watched the mages huddle closer to the dwindling warmth. Soon it would be gone, and they would need to continue on.