"Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Legends 03 - Test Of The Twins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weis Margaret)

than ever. The rain was falling harder as the storm clouds drew nearer. Other than that, there
certainly didn't appear to be anything frightening.
The kender tried his best to keep silent, but the words just sort of leaped out of his mouth before he
could stop them. "What's the matter, Caramon? I don't see anything. Is your knee bothering you? I-
"
"Be quiet, Tas!" Caramon ordered in a strained, tight voice. He was staring around him, his eyes
wide, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously.
Tas sighed and clapped his hand over his mouth to bottle up the words, determined to keep quiet if
it killed him. When he was quiet, it suddenly occurred to him that it was so very quiet around here.
There was no sound at all when the thunder wasn't thundering, not even the usual sounds he was
used to hearing when it rained-water dripping from tree leaves and plopping onto the ground, the
wind rustling in the branches, birds singing their rain songs, complaining about their wet feathers....
Tas had a strange, quaking feeling inside. He looked at the stumps of the burned trees more closely.
Even burned, they were huge, easily the largest trees he had ever seen in his life except for
Tas gulped. Leaves, autumn colors, the smoke of cooking fires curling up from the valley, the lake-
blue and smooth as crystal ...
Blinking, he rubbed his eyes to clear them of the gummy film of mud and rain. He stared around
him, looking back up at the trail, at that huge boulder. . . . He stared at the lake that he could see
quite clearly through the burned tree stumps. He stared at the mountains with their sharp, jagged
peaks. It wasn't Uncle Trapspringer who'd been here before...... Oh, Caramon!" he whispered in
horror.
Chapter 2
"What is it?" Caramon turned, looking at Tas so strangely that the kender felt his inside prickly
feeling spread to his outside. Little bumps appeared all up and down his arms.
"N-nothing," Tas stammered. "Just my imagination. Caramon," he added urgently, "let's leave!
Right now. We can go anywhere we want to! We can go back in time to when we were all together,
to when we were all happy! We can go back to when Flint and Sturm were alive, to when Raistlin
still wore the red robes and Tika-"
"Shut up, Tas," snapped Caramon warningly, his words accented by a flash of lightning that made
even the kender flinch.
The wind was rising, whistling through the dead tree stumps with an eerie sound, like someone
drawing a shivering breath through clenched teeth. The warm, slimy rain had ceased. The clouds
above them swirled past, revealing the pale sun shimmering in the gray sky. But on the horizon, the
clouds continued to mass, continued to grow blacker and blacker.
Multicolored lightning flickered among them, giving them a distant, deadly beauty.
Caramon started walking along the muddy trail, gritting his teeth against the pain of his injured leg.
But Tas, looking down that trail that he now knew so well-even though it was appallingly different-
could see to where it rounded a bend. Knowing what lay beyond that bend, he stood where he was,
planted firmly in the middle of the road, staring at Caramon's back.
After a few moments of unusual silence, Caramon realized something was wrong and glanced
around. He stopped, his face drawn with pain and fatigue.
"C'mon, Tas!" he said irritably.
Twisting his topknot of hair around his finger, Tas shook his head.
Caramon glared at him.
Tas finally burst out, "Those are vallenwood trees, Caramon!"
The big man's stern expression softened. "I know, Tas," he said wearily. "This is Solace."
"No, it isn't!" Tas cried. "It-it's just some place that has vallenwoods! There must be lots of places
that have vallenwoods-"
"And are there lots of places that have Crystalmir Lake, Tas, or the Kharolis Mountains or that
boulder up where you and I've both seen Flint sitting, carving his wood, or this road that leads to