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

She stared at him. "We could have stopped him. You don't have to be so gentle with me, Carlyle. I am the Grandmaster now. You shared your fears and I dismissed them. I was a fool."
Carlyle rose to his feet and looked around. At last he met her gaze. "We'll get him, Grandmaster. Eventually we will find him again. Mark my words."
"Indeed," she replied, still feeling like a complete fool. "Notify the authorities at once to give chase. It cannot be too difficult to track a stolen prison transport."
"I'm not sure about that," Carlyle said.
"And why not?"
"Grimshaw is traveling south," Carlyle explained. "Heading towardЧ"
"Tora'nah and the invaders from Draconae," Cassandra finished, cold fingers of dread brushing against the nape of her neck. Now she understood the last words Grimshaw had spoken.
Alliances must be made.
"He's going to Raptus," Cassandra said quietly. "Grimshaw is going to ally himself with Raptus. We have to warn Timothy."
She looked around for Ivar, to ask him to hurry to August Hill with the terrible news, but he was nowhere to be found.
Cassandra called his name, scanning the courtyard, new fear growing in her heart.
"I saw him moving toward the transport just after you were struck down," Carlyle said. "You don't think he might have ..."
The question hung unanswered in the air, as Cassandra gazed off in the direction the craft had flown.
"He might have," she answered in a fearful whisper, the whereabouts of the Asura now weighing heavily upon her.
CHAPTER FOUR
General Raptus watched with uneasy fascination as the device that the mages called the Burrower dug through the first layers of dirt and rock, and he was glad that he had ordered his raiders to keep some of the mages alive. Mercy had not caused him to do this. It was practicality. It had been ages since the Wurm roamed free in this world, and to learn what he could of its current eventsЧits most vulnerable targets and most important leadersЧhe would have to interrogate prisoners.
Now, though, he had found another use for those he had allowed to live: operating the Burrower. The mages had seemed horrified when he instructed them to dig up the tombs of the Dragons of Old, the ancient burial ground of his own kind. The weakling Verlis had instructed them never to defile that land. But Raptus had set them to digging immediately.
He was searching for something.
His soldiers could have used their talons to dig down into the rock and soil, but the mages had found a way to accomplish his chore all the faster. Raptus also enjoyed the irony that if he did find the object of his search, the mages' inventiveness would have helped to hasten their own extermination.
The Burrower bucked, rocked, and whined as its spinning nose tore into the sacred ground. Raptus looked from the deepening hole to the mage who operated the digging mechanism. The man's face was flushed and pink, his eyes bulging in their sockets. It was obvious that he was terrified of failing at the task Raptus had assigned him. Yasgul, one of general's more sadistic soldiers, sat crouched behind the man with sword in hand, adding to the pathetic mage's terror. It was how all humans should behave in the presence of their superiors, Raptus thought. And soon he would make that belief a reality.
"Is this wise?" asked a raspy voice.
Raptus whipped around, twin gouts of flame leaping out from his flared nostrils. He looked upon the grim and scarred face of Hannuk, one of his most trusted advisors.
"You question me, Hannuk?"
"I mean you no disrespect, General." Hannuk averted his eyes. "But why do you tempt the spirits of our ancient ancestors by defiling their final resting place with that"Чhe gestured with his hand toward the digging machineЧ"that damnable thing."
Raptus looked back to the Burrower, its cylindrical body penetrating the ground farther, toppling the long-standing stones that marked the graves of the species that had evolved into the Wurm. It was a sad sight indeed, but necessary if the future that he imagined for his people was ever to come to pass.
"It is a sacrifice that must be made," Raptus snarled, watching as the device continued its progress, digging deeper and deeper into the cold, hard ground of Tora'nah. "The mages have provided us with a way to hasten our plans. I have no compunction about using their invention to acquire what is needed to achieve this victory."
"What is needed?" Hannuk asked, moving nearer. "We have breached the divide and our forces are resolute and strong." He blew a stream of orange fire into the air. "Now we lay siege to the Xerxis, and the accursed Parliament of Mages, and make those responsible for their treachery pay dearly."
It's all so simple for him, Raptus thought. Hannuk believed so strongly in their superiority, but his faith was unfounded. The mages of Terra drastically outnumbered the WurmЧthousands to oneЧand their combat mages wielded sorcery vastly more powerful than what the Wurm had at their disposal.
A horrible shriek like the birth cries of a thousand hatchlings filled the cold air of Tora'nah, and Raptus spun to see that the Burrower had struck something. Green, foul-smelling gas erupted like a geyser from the massive hole in the ground.
Both the mage operating the machine and Yasgul, his guard, began to choke, coughing uncontrollably as the noxious fumes assailed them. Raptus strode toward the excavation, Hannuk at his side. Cautiously they approached the ragged edge. The air was befouled by the escaping gas, and they both unfurled their wings to fan it away.
"You talk of destroying the mages," Raptus said as he peered into the thick, roiling green cloud. "But their numbers are far superior to ours, and their magic is great. Without some other advantage, we have no hope against them."
The general gestured for the Burrower to be retracted from the hole, and the digging machine slowly began to withdraw, moving backward up the ramp with the whirring and grinding of its mechanical innards.
"No mage can stand before us," Hannuk argued as Raptus leaped down into the gaping hole. "We have the furnace of hatred in our hearts, our fire consumes them, and we come as death from aboveЧ"
"The mages would strike us all down in a matter of days," Raptus said with a growl as he landed atop the flat piece of gray stone that had been cracked by the spinning head of the Burrower. "First they would be afraid, but then they would gather their numbers, pooling their magical might to see us dead."
Raptus knelt, his wings continuing to fan away the thick, greenish fog that leaked from the jagged crack in the stone beneath his taloned feet.
"Then what are we going to do?" Hannuk asked, peering over the edge of the hole. "Do we stay here, waiting for the arrival of the magesЧfor our inevitable deaths? You promised vengeance upon our betrayers, Raptus. How will this ever come to pass if we do not attack?"
The general worked his claws into a crack in the stone and then tore it up and away. "I did not say we would not attack."
"But how will weЧ"
"As a hatchling the ancient beliefs were taught to me by a wizened Wurm called Barrakus," the general explained. "In me he saw something special, and because of that he shared a secret that had been kept by members of his clan for countless agesЧ a secret meant only to be revealed to the one who could potentially change the destiny of the Wurm."
Raptus reached down into the darkness of the breach he had just torn in the slab of rock, his hands falling upon the warm, smooth surface of an object that his people had believed only legend.
"Barrakus believed me to be that Wurm, Hannuk," Raptus said, and slowly he withdrew his hands from the darkness, holding an enormous egg-shaped thing of the same sickly green as the gas that had come from that hole.
"And with this, I intend to prove him right."
While he had been imprisoned in a dungeon cell in SkyHaven, his ability to cast magic taken from him by an inhibitor sphere, Arturo Grimshaw had come to the most horrific of realizations.
He needed to become what he most despised.
Now the former constable piloted the prison transport south, his arm, composed entirely of magic, manipulating the controls of the sky craft with ease, bending the spells that powered the airship to his will. The transport soared above the rich, dark green of the Yarrith Forest, and onward toward Tora'nah, and his new destiny as a creature of chaos.
His entire life had been about the pursuit of order, and he was certain that this was why his master, Alhazred, had originally sought him out as a boy. The archmage saw in him the ability to do great things, to bend chaos to his will, and to bring about control. And that was exactly what he had done, first as a security officer and then by quickly moving up the ranks to become constable. The secret power of Alhazred had fueled his ambitions, and he had served the archmage well, but now his dark master was dead, and he felt his tenuous grasp on the order of his world slipping through his fingers.
He had first felt this upon learning of the Cade boyЧthe un-magicianЧbut had faith in his own abilities, and his dark master's growing might. The freak of a boy would be only a minor irritant, dealt with swiftly.
If only that had been the case.
Grimshaw felt his entire body begin to tremble at the thought of the boy. How is it possible that this one child has been responsible for effecting so much change in the world? It's almost as if young Cade is somehow the personification of chaos. A chill ran through him at the thought.
He was unsure how much farther he had to travel, and conjured a map that floated in the air so that he could check his progress. His means of transport appeared as a bright red dot on the magical map, and Tora'nah as a star of yellow. It won't be long now, he mused, estimating the distance in hours. Plenty of time to adjust his way of thinking to reflect the pandemonium that had infected the world.