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

of pure, unblemished white that marked him as a supplicant to the Order of Pal-adins. At his side hung the
worn battlehammer he used for practice.
He tried to adjust his heavy chain mail shirt, but no matter how much he jerked and twisted, the armor
still seemed to pinch him under the arms. He found Tarl already waiting for him downstairs, Shal at his side.
The two were in the middle of an intent conversation, which was broken off abruptly when Kern entered
the room.
Before he could wonder what they had been discussing, Tarl spoke exuberantly.
"The temple's sages have been trying to solve the rid-dle of the hammer for twenty-two years. Are you
as curi-ous as I am, Son, to learn if they have discovered an answer at last?"
Kern nodded. "I'm ready, Father."
"And so am I," a sparkling voice said behind Kern.
He whirled just in time to see Listle step blithely through a wall of solid stone, the ruby pendant she
always wore winking brightly.
"Must you do that?" the young warrior asked with a frown.
"Must I do what, Kern?" the elf replied innocently.
Kern gritted his teeth, unwilling to give her the satisfac-tion of a reply. Listle had the disconcerting habit
of step-ping through walls and other seemingly solid objects when one least expected it. Shal considered the
elf's abil-ity to pass through solid matter a magical curiosity. Kern just considered it a nuisance. He stepped
forward, open-ing the tower's door.
"Be careful," Shal admonished them, her eyes grim. "Remember, Phlan isn't the safe haven it used to
be."
The three promised to be cautious and stepped outside.
Denlor's Tower stood on the north edge of Phlan, but the temple of Tyr was located in the central city,
so they had a fair distance to walk. It was a chill, gray day. Autumn had arrived early, and winter also
promised to be prema-ture. Lately, when Kern looked out of his chamber's win-dow in the morning, he
could see a thin white line of ice where the steely waters of the Moonsea met the beach.
Kern firmly gripped Tarl's elbow, guiding his blind father, while Listle bounded ahead with her typical
ebul-lience. They turned onto a narrow street, and the comfort-ing sight of Denlor's Tower was lost from
view. Shal had been right to caution them to take care, Kern thought to himself. Over the last several years,
Phlan had undergone a steady decline. Everyone knew the mysterious malaise was due to the growing
crisis of the lost relic. As surely as the clerics of Tyr were dying, so was Phlan, street by street and person
by person.
In Kern's childhood memories, Phlan had been a city of broad, tree-lined avenues, neatly kept stone
cottages, and broad cobbled squares centered around clear-water foun-tains. The Phlan of today was
starkly different. Dark, sour-smelling water ran down the center of most streets, their cobblestones cracked
and covered with refuse and slime. In places the cobbles were gone altogether, leaving gaping holes filled
with foul-smelling muck churned up by the hooves of horses. The trees that arched over the avenues were
dead, their brittle branches sagging down like skeletal fingers. Brick smokestacks belched forth black,
sulfurous clouds that stained the sky above, turn-ing its once bright azure to an angry iron gray. Now when
it rained in Phlan, the rain was gritty and dark, the color of ashes.
As they walked, Kern noted that the houses slumping to either side of the avenue were squalid and
filthy. Hard-faced women dumped their dirty dishwater out of second-story windows, heedless of who
might be walking below. Shifty-eyed men clad in mud-stained tunics congregated in the doorways of
abandoned buildings, watching travel-ers pass, now and then baring yellowed teeth in smiles that were
anything but neighborly. Kern did his best to steer clear.
"Tell me truthfully, Kern," Tarl said as the three of them walked. "How does the city look?"
On his honor, Kern could not lie, though his heart was heavy. He knew how much the city meant to his
father. "Worse," the young warrior said sadly. "With all the soot and shadows, it looks more like twilight
than midday." He gave wide berth to a tattered pile of refuse lying in the gutter only to realize that it was a
corpse, half-eaten by rats, with a rusted knife sticking out of its back. He mut-tered a quick prayer to Tyr