"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Deathgate Cycle 7 - The Seventh Gate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

Some enormous green-scaled body had fallen from the sky, crashed down among the trees. Alfred,
without doubt.

Yet where was he now?

"Could something have carriedтАФ" Marit began.

"Hsst!" Hugh the Hand emphasized his warning with a crushing grip on her wrist, dragged her
down into the underbrush.

Marit crouched, held perfectly still. She strained to hear whatever sound had caught the Hand's
attention.

The silence of the forest was broken now and again by the fall of a branch, but she heard nothing
else. Quiet. Too damn quiet. She looked at Hugh question-ingly.
"Voices!" He leaned over, whispered into her ear. "I swear I heard something that could have been
a voice. It stopped talking when you spoke."

Marit nodded. She hadn't been talking all that loudly. Whatever it was must be close, with sharp
hearing.

Patience. She counseled herself to keep still, wait for whatever was out there to reveal itself. Hardly
breathing, she and Hugh waited and listened.

They heard the voice then. It spoke with a grating sound, horrible to hear, as if jagged edges of
broken bones were grinding against each other. Marit shuddered and even Hugh the Hand
blenched. His face twisted in revulsion.
"What theтАФ"

"A dragon!" Marit whispered, cold with dread.

That was why Alfred hadn't flown back to the city.

He was being pursued, probably attacked, by the most fearsome creature in the Labyrinth.

The runes on her body glowed. She fought the impulse to turn and flee.

One of the laws of the Labyrinth: never fight a red dragon unless it has you cornered and escape is
impossible. Then you fight only to force the dragon to kill you swiftly.

"What's it talking about?" Hugh asked. "Can you understand?"

Marit nodded, sickened.

The dragon was speaking the Patryn language. Marit translated for Hugh's benefit.

"I don't know what you are, man-wyrm," the dragon was saying. "I've never seen anything like you.
But I plan to find out. I must have leisure to study you. Take you apart."