"Jim Theis - The Eye of Argon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Theis Jim)

shoulder. He swlived to note the cause of the noble's attention, raised
his sword over his head, and prepared to leash a vicious downward cleft,
but fell short as the haft of a steel rimed pike clashed against his
unguarded skull. Then blackness and solitude. Silence enshrouding and
ever peaceful reind supreme.
"Before me, sirrah! Before me as always! Ha, Ha Ha, Haaaa...", nobly
cackled.

-3-

Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind
gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the
stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of
blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.
Grignr's muddled brain reeled from the shock of the blow he had
recieved to the base of his skull. The events leading to his predicament
were slow to filter back to him. He dickered with the notion that he was
dead and had descended or sunk, however it may be, to the shadowed land
beyond the the aperature of the grave, but rejected this hypothesis when
his memory sifted back within his grips. This was not the land of the
dead, it was something infinitely more precarious than anything the grave
could offer. Death promised an infinity of peace, not the finite misery of
an inactive life of confined torture, forever concealed from the life
bearing shafts of the beloved rising sun. The orb that had been before
taken for granted, yet now cherished above all else. To be forever refused
further glimpses of the snow capped summits of the land of his birth, never
again to witness the thrill of plundering unexplored lands beyond the crest
of a bleeding horizon, and perhaps worst of all the denial to ever again
encompass the lustful excitement of caressing the naked curves of the body
of a trim yound wench.
This was indeed one of the buried chasms of Hell concealed within the
inner depths of the palace's despised interior. A fearful ebony chamber
devised to drive to the brinks of insanity the minds of the unfortunately
condemned, through the inapt solitude of a limbo of listless dreary
silence.

-3 1/2-

A tightly rung elliptical circle or torches cast their wavering shafts
prancing morbidly over the smooth surface of a rectangular, ridged alter.
Expertly chisled forms of grotesque gargoyles graced the oblique rim
protruberating the length of the grim orifice of death, staring forever
ahead into nothingness in complete ignorance of the bloody rites enacted in
their prescence. Brown flaking stains decorated the golden surface of the
ridge surrounding the alter, which banked to a small slit at the lower
right hand corner of the altar. The slit stood above a crudely pounded
pail which had several silver meshed chalices hanging at its sides.
Dangling at the rimof golden mallet, the handle of which was engraved with
images of twisted faces and groved at its far end with slots designed for a
snug hand grip. The head of the mallet was slightly larger than a clenched