"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Deathgate Cycle 6 - Into the Labyrinth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

CHAPTER 1

ABARRACH

ABARRACH: WORLD OF STONE, WORLD OF DARKNESS LIT BY THE fires of molten sea,
world of stalagmites and stalactites, world of fire dragons, world of
poisonous air and sulfurous fumes, world of magic.

Abarrach: world of the dead.

Xar, Lord of the Nexus, and now Lord of Abarrach, sat back in his chair,
rubbed his eyes. The rune-constructs he was studying were starting to blur
together. He'd almost made a mistakeтАФand that was inexcusable. But he had
caught himself in time, corrected it. Closing his aching eyes, he went over
the construct again in his mind.

Begin with the heart-rune. Connect this sigil's stem to an adjoining rune's
base. Inscribe the sigla on the breast, working upward to the head. Yes, that
was where he'd gone wrong the first few times. The head was importantтАФ vital.
Then draw the sigla on the trunk, finally the arms, the legs.

It was perfect. He could find no flaw. In his mind's eye, he imagined the dead
body on which he'd been working rising up and living again. A corrupt form of
life, admittedly, but a beneficial one. The corpse was far more useful now
than it would have been moldering in the ground.

Xar smiled in triumph, but it was a triumph whose life span was shorter than
that of his imaginary defunct. His thoughts went something like this:

I can raise the dead.

At least I am fairly certain I can raise the dead.

I can't be sure.

That was the pall over his elation. There were no dead for him to raise. Or
rather, there were too many dead. Just not dead enough.

In bitter frustration, Xar slammed his hands down on the elaborately conceived
rune-construct. The rune-bones* went flying, skittering and sliding off the
table onto the floor.

*A game played on Abarrach, similar to an ancient game known on Earth as
mah-jongg. The playing pieces are inscribed with the sigla used by both
Patryns and Sartan to work their magic. Fire Sea, vol. 3 of The Death Gate
Cycle.

Xar paid no attention to them. He could always put the construct together
again. Again and again. He knew it as well as he knew the rune-magic to
conjure up water. For all the good it would do him.