"Константин Бояндин. The Guardian ("Истории Ралиона") " - читать интересную книгу автора

creature standing on the ice pillars; no faces came out of memory. But the
hissing, calm voice that interrupted the horrible scene was clear and
familiar to Rhissa.
"We should find his place," said she shortly. "It should be here
somewhere. And we shall find it quickly, until another vision comes."
"I would like to search the lighthouse first," Nlaminer objected, "It
seems there was some disaster there."
"There will be another disaster if we do not understand what is
happening now," Rhissa added and they walked towards the huge stone building
rising up as if from the stone itself. Something sparkled occasionally on
the roof of the building, but in the dark nothing could be seen there.

* * *

There were visions before, Nlaminer thought. They never were troubled
by them... and never wounded in the visions. Like being wounded in the
dreams, he considered that impossible and ridiculous. This is the time,
probably, to change one's mind.
For Rhissa, the mental travel was a part of her clerical knowledge.
Several gods talked to their devotees in this way; for Nlaminer, though,
mental travel was some inner ability, unpredictable and hard to control. The
best he could do was to oppose the sendings and stay in this reality. This
is why he paid no serious attention to the visions that came to him.
And yet something troubled him now. There is some detail that did not
present before. Nlaminer decided to think about other things; the best way
to let the mind solve the mystery.
They approached the building - sort of a castle, really - and were
surprised again. A round piece of land encircled by the cliff was now a
lifeless wasteland. No grass, no insects, nothing but small rocks. They
stood for a while, then Rhissa took from the earth something weightless,
brittle and tiny. She looked at it, then stretched her arm to Nlaminer. He
had a closer look. A leaf of some grass, withered, as if burned.
"Completely dead," she remarked. "But I feel no undead around here."
Nlaminer understood it quite well. It was the day they first met when
some terrible vampire-like creature attacked them and nearly killed them
both. He remembered well how the grass withered and died as the monster
walked to them. Its undead essence was so strong it poisoned life with its
very presence.
The grass looked exactly the same now.
They looked over the western corner of the lighthouse, the small grove
of nice birch-like trees. Well, they were trees once; now it was only
skeletons of the trees that they saw. Like the grass remains, the trunks
were lifeless, crippled and ugly. Rhissa was about to leave the devastated
grove when Nlaminer detected something interesting. A branch on one of the
trees seemed to survive the disaster. Though it was also near death now, he
took it carefully and examined it closely. The branch could be restored to
life if they found water quickly.
Another discovery was half-buried nearby-a large marble plate with a
rune engraved in it.
"Murti," Rhissa was astonished. "I didn't know that one can desecrate