"Karl Edward Wagner - Kane 01 - Darkness Weaves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

"Ghouls!" Imel echoed. "What kind of man would choose as his lair these ghoul-infested tombs?"




II

Of Weavers and Webs




The storm began with renewed fury after Arbas had left with Efrel's emissary. Lightning flung forked
tongues against the eroded escarpment; thunder blasted the pitted stone, shook the mouldering sleepers
in their beds of plundered decay. Within Kane's lair, the reverberating echoes sounded distant and unreal.
Flickers of bluish light stole past the curtained doorway in fitful effulgence.

Kane hunched in his chair, drinking cup after cup of wine. Ordinarily he would have drunk no more than
constant vigilance permitted. Tonight his mood was blacker than the storm outside, and enemies human
or inhuman might steal upon him at their peril. His cruel face was set in dark rage, and the death-fires in
his cold blue eyes matched the flickering hell of the storm.

Kane drained his cup with a grunt and reached carefully for the wine jar. It was empty. Kane swore and
flung it into a corner of the crypt, already littered with broken glass of earlier jars. The thick glass struck
something soft and bounded away without shattering. Kane muttered a curse and went to retrieve it. He
intended to smash it properly.

The wine bottle had bounded onto a mound of rotted debris in a disused section of the crypt. It hung in
the air a few inches clear of the wreckage. Its thick, black-green glass was smeared with blood and
ichor.
 Kane took a pull from the new bottle he had broken open as he crossed the chamber. His uncanny eyes
focused in the near-darkness.

A cave spider had spun her web across the niches with their mouldering coffins and sardonic skeletons.
As large as Kane's hand, the white-furred arachnid had snared a bat. The heavy bottle, flung aimlessly in
Kane's blind wrath, had struck weaver and prey together--pulping them against the debris. Clotted with
fur and chitin and venom and gore, the chance missile spun slowly in the thick web. It was a thing of
beauty, the web, and meticulously woven....

Kane laughed mirthlessly. His blade slashed the web to make a shroud.




III

Escape to the Ship