Destiny полностью

His exhortations in the old tongue gave way to a chant. Only eight words repeated over and over, but Favaronas could not decipher them. The words were not Elvish of any era, nor the abbreviations of the stone scrolls. They sounded coarser than any elf tongue. In the oldest chronicles there were references to Kevim, the language of the gods, and Favaronas wondered if that was what he was hearing.

The chant was remorseless. Faeterus’s voice marched up the vocal register then down. He punctuated his invocation with eight loud claps then returned to the rising and falling chant. It went on so long, Favaronas thought he would scream. The words hammered at him, bored into his skull. He was sure he would never forget them, just as he was certain he could never pronounce them. He wrapped his arms around his head, trying to shut out the sound and spare his battered ears. It didn’t help. The words continued to beat down on him like a hail of stones.

A tremor shook the ground, then another. Faeterus lifted his arms during the chant then dropped them in the brief interval of silence. With his heavy robe flapping, he resembled some impossibly awkward bird trying to take to the air. At one point in the chant, he stamped his right foot, causing the mountain to vibrate like a hammer-struck gong. The blows of his heel sent loose stones tumbling down the mountainside.

Favaronas lifted his gaze. He gasped.

Above the center of the valley, a dark mass had appeared. It hovered high over the Tympanum. To be visible from that distance, it had to be gigantic. With each succeeding eight-word chant, the mass grew. Soon it darkened a sizable portion of the valley beneath it. In growing horror, Favaronas realized the sorcerer’s purpose. The verse in the stone scroll spoke of “the sun’s black eye.” With no natural eclipse available, Faeterus would blot out the sun with a dark cloud of his own creation.

There and then he resolved not to wait for whatever awful fate Faeterus had planned for him. Clawing at the stony ground, seeking a handhold, he hauled himself forward. His progress was pitifully slow, but it was progress. All he need do was reach the front edge of the plateau, fifty yards away, and roll over. His torment would end at last. As he dragged himself along, he tried to make peace with what he had done.

Ambition was at the root of all his trouble. He should have gone with Glanthon and the warriors when they departed the valley. Instead he’d chosen to probe secrets no mortal should ever know. Faeterus was still bellowing his invocation, but Favaronas didn’t hear him. Instead, he heard Glanthon’s voice calling his name. The warrior had searched a long time before assuming Favaronas was lost in the desert and riding on without him. If he could change one single moment in his life, Favaronas would never have hidden himself away from Glanthon. He would have stayed with the warriors and traveled back to Khurinost.

His path took him by Faeterus, but the sorcerer paid him no heed. Faeterus’ ragged robe was stained with sweat. Blood flowed from the sole of his foot as he continued to stamp the ground. A fleeting glimpse of the sorcerer’s face within the hood caused Favaronas to avert his gaze quickly. Faeterus’s eyes seemed dark holes in his alien-looking face.

The payers covering the surface of the Stairs were rough, worn by centuries of weather to a harsh, pebbled texture. The breast of Favaronas’s geb was ripped in a dozen places. A trail of blood stretched out behind him. His fingertips were bloody, several fingernails torn away. When his accumulation of hurts grew great enough, he faltered, resting his head on the cool stone.

Faeterus’s voice echoed like thunder.

Move, you useless creature, he lashed himself, and with trembling hands reached out to claim another three feet of stone.

The elf camp, so lately delivered from the menace of ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps, was thrown into new panic when the boiling, black cloud stained the morning sky. Most elves fled at once, seeking shelter in the outer ring of monoliths. When the cloud had swelled to match the size of the stone platform below it, the camp was blasted by wind. Air rushed toward the cloud, collapsing tents and sucking up smaller objects along the way. Cups, water jugs, and tools raced end over end on their way to the distant platform.

The spectacle confounded Gilthas and his advisors. Standing with them outside the Speaker’s tent, Sa’ida was alarmed by the display. No one in the valley but Faeterus had the magical prowess to stir up such forces, she said.

Gilthas exchanged a worried look with Hamaramis. Kerian’s hunting party must have failed to put an end to the sorcerer’s activities. Yet Gilthas refused to give up hope. The Lioness might yet prevail.