"Tad Williams - MST4 - To Green Angel Tower Part 2 v0.5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

It had been long moments since he had caught his most
recent glimpse of the swooping bird-he was certain now
it was an owl-and he hobbled on in the direction he had

TO GREEN ANGEL TOWER 35

last seen it, his breath now coming in harsh gasps. His in-
jured leg was not used to running, and it bumed him,
throbbed. He did his best to ignore it.

Quiet, quiet-it was still as a stagnant pond here. The
tents stood, dark and lifeless as the stones drylanders set
in fields where they buried their dead.

But there' Tiamak felt his stomach turn again. There
was movement! One of the tents not far away shook as
though in a wind, and some light inside it threw strange
moving shadows onto the walls.

Even as he saw it he felt a tickling in his nostrils, a sort
of burning, and with it came a sweet, musky scent. He
sneezed convulsively and almost tripped, but caught him-
self before falling to the ground. He limped toward the
tent, which pulsed with light and shadow as though some
monstrous thing was being born inside. He tried to raise
his voice to cry out that he was coming and to raise an
, alarm, for his fear was rising higher and higher-but he
could not make a sound. Even the painful rasp of his
breathing had become faint and whispery.

The tent, too, was strangely silent. Pushing down his
fright, he caught at the flap and- threw it back.

At first he could see nothing more than dark shapes and
bright light, almost an exact reflection of the shadow pup-
pets on the outside walls of the tent. Within a few in-
stants, the moving images began to come clear.

At the tent's far wall stood Camaris. He seemed to have
been struck, for blood rilled from some cut on his head,
staining his cheek and hair black, and he reeled as though
his wits had been addled. Still, bowed and leaning against
the fabric for support, he was yet fierce, like a bear beset
by hounds. He had no blade, but held a piece of firewood
clenched in one fist and waved it back and forth, holding
off a menacing shape that was almost all black but for a
flash of white hands and something that glinted in one of
those hands.