"James M. Ward - The Pool 3 - Pool of Twilight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ward James M)

Legend held that long, long ago, the god Bane wished to know how much of the world would one day
fall under his evil dominion. He went to his wicked sister, the god-dess Shar, mistress of the dark. Shar
concocted a potion from the fabric of midnight, the very moment of time between one day and the next,
when magic is at its most powerful and the future most easily deciphered. Bane drank the potion, but such
was its power that the god was plunged into a delirium. It was in this fevered state that Bane penned the
thirteen prophecies included in The Oracle of Strife.
For long centuries, the book was lost to the world. Then, some three hundred years ago, an itinerant
cleric of Tyr happened upon the tome in the ruins of a temple of Bane deep in the primeval forests west of
the Moonsea. Eventually the book was delivered to the custodianship of the temple of Tyr in Phlan. It was
a relic of fearsome evil, and the clerics locked it away under powerful wards to keep it out of the hands of
those with sinister intentions.
During the last century, the book had been all but forgotten. But after Bane had heinously usurped the
Ham-mer of Tyr, one of the temple's sages remembered the tome. The book was brought out for study. It
was then that the temple's sages discovered that one of the thirteen prophecies concerned the theft of the
hammer as well as its subsequent hiding place. After that, long, frustrating years of studying the prophecy
ensued. Years thatтАФ apparentlyтАФhad now finally come to an end.
"It was only recently we realized that not all of the prophecies in the tome pleased Bane," Patriarch
Anton explained. His gaze moved to a wizened woman with eyes as dark and shining as obsidian. "Why
don't you tell them what you have learned, Sister Sendara?" Sendara was the temple's auguress, and an
expert on the matter of prophecy.
The ancient cleric nodded. "The key lies in the Time of Troubles," Sendara began. "It has been thirteen
years now since that great conflagration shook Faerun, when Bane was destroyed, along with his brethren,
the dark gods Myrkul and Bhaal. I now have reason to believe that Bane predicted his own demise in The
Oracle of Strife."
A murmur of surprise rippled about the table.
Sendara continued in her rich, strong voice. "As we know, Bane was in a deep trance when he penned
the prophecies. I think it is conceivable that he had no control over what emerged. Thus it was that he could
not help but foresee his failures as well as his victories. Everyone who has studied the tome knows that the
last prophecy is almost illegible. It looks as if Bane crossed it out in anger after he recovered from his
delirium. I had always assumed that it was simply because he wasn't pleased with his poetic achievement
on that one." Sendara gave a sharp-edged smile. "Bane was quite puffed-up about his poetry, despite the
fact that it's dreadful stuff. But from the few words I am able to decipher, I feel certain that this prophecy
concerns Bane's downfall. Apparently that is why he tried to deface it. Bane thought if he obscured the
prophecy, such a fated thing wouldn't come to pass."
"He was very wrong about that!" Listle whispered to Kern with a snort.
"Hush!" he hissed back, elbowing her for emphasis.
Brother Dameron, a young, round-faced cleric with a rather expansive paunch, joined in the explanation.
"Sister Sendara's insights gave me an idea," he told the others. "If Bane had attempted to deface one
prophecy that dis-pleased him, wouldn't he have tried the same with others? Perhaps he might even have
changed small details that annoyed him. To answer that query, I performed a mod-est experiment on the
prophecy concerning the hammer."
Here Brother Dameron reached out and opened the book on the table to a place marked by a black silk
ribbon. Kern noticed that silver holy symbols stood at each cor-ner of the tableтАФwards to keep the evil of
the book from tainting those who studied it. Dameron turned to the last page of the prophecy of the
hammer.
"If you look very closely, you can just make out a series of fine scratch marks in the parchment, along
with a few tiny flecks of ink. They're so faint we did not notice them earlier. Now that I've studied it,
there's no mistaking the conclusion." The sage paused dramatically. "Several lines have been scoured from
the parchment with erasing sand. There's no reason to believe that it was anyone but Bane himself who did
this. And that means the missing lines must say something Bane did not want revealed."