Destiny полностью

While the brave celebrations proceeded, Sa’ida repaired alone to her tent. She had come to the forsaken valley as much to discomfort her enemies in Khuri-Khan as to aid the laddad. The laddad khan’s courage and gallant manner had won her over, and she gladly applied her healing art to him. But she was well and truly frightened. Although a priestess of long and honorable service to her goddess, Sa’ida had no skill for high magic such as Faeterus commanded. Her awareness of the ancient power in the valley required no especial skill, only sensitivity. She wore a brave face for the laddad, but in the solitude of her tent, she let go of pretense. Her heart raced, her hands shook, and sweat soaked her white robe.

And yet she would not let fear keep her from doing what she could. Settling as comfortably as she could on the borrowed carpet, she composed her mind and set herself free of her body with a far-seeing spell. Her naes (the Khurish word for soul, or a person’s captive spirit) rose high above the laddad camp. From that vantage point, the movement of the black cloud was plain. The vast mass wasn’t merely thinning and expanding to cover more area, it was turning slowly on a central axis sited directly over the valley’s geographical heart. The rotation was antisunwise, to Sa’ida a sign of negative power. She willed herself to move toward it, but her naes could not pass through the cloud. She made a second attempt and the reaction was violent. Instead of merely being halted, she was hurled back to her body. She arrived with such force, her body was thrown backward. It struck the side of the tent, knocking a support loose and collapsing half the structure. As she lay, gasping for breath, laughter sounded in the darkness.

“Woman, you cannot trifle with me!”

Sa’ida struggled to sit up. “Faeterus! What are you after here?”

“What every practitioner of our art wants: power! When I have it, the first to feel my wrath will be the spawn of those who condemned me. And after I’ve dealt with the elves, I shall turn to you desert-dwelling vermin.”

Sa’ida lifted her hand to the Eye of Elir-Sana. It was a simple gesture, meant to shield the goddess’s image from Faeterus’s blasphemous presence, but contact with the jewel sent a surge of new strength through her. She concealed it, maintaining her pose of cowed weakness.

“Why do you hate the laddad?” she asked carefully. “You are one yourself.”

“I am not!” Although the shout echoed like thunder, she knew no one else could hear it. Faeterus’s voice was meant for her alone. “Chance gave me their form, but I am not of their cursed race!”

“What race are you, then?”

A figure took shape in the darkness. Faeterus allowed his naes to reveal his true form, without the disguise of his heavy robes. Sa’ida’s hand tightened convulsively around the amulet.

“Begone,” she gasped. “Go back to whatever dark place spawned you!”

Faeterus laughed. His phantom hand reached out and grasped Sa’ida’s wrist. When he raised his arm, he pulled her naes out. Her physical body went limp.

“You will witness my triumph. It will be most instructive!”

With a speed that left Sa’ida breathless, they soared above the laddad camp, rising-far higher than Sa’ida had done alone, then they rushed eastward. In seconds they were at a broad shelf cut into the side of Mount Rakaris, which Faeterus called the Stair of Distant Vision.

Her spirit form went sprawling as he abruptly released her. He lifted a hand, and immediately it was filled with a spear. Rather than an actual, physical weapon, the spear was the representation of a spell. He drove it through her thigh, pinning her in place, and the shock of the spiritual impalement drew an involuntary scream. But pain was a force Sa’ida understood. She conquered her agony quickly although she could not free her naes. She remained firmly anchored to the stone.

None of this was visible to Favaronas. From his place at the edge of the Stair, all he saw was the sorcerer standing rigidly by the center pinnacle, head bowed. Abruptly, Faeterus lifted his face and arms to the darkened sky and broke his long silence, declaiming in a loud, clear voice. The language was Old Elvish, and Favaronas recognized the rhyme scheme and meter as an ancient bardic recitation called a houmrya. He had never heard it spoken before. The poetry was said to have erratic, uncontrollable magical effects, and Speaker of the Stars Sithel had banned it long, long ago.

Because Favaronas was an accomplished scholar, be detected the changes Faeterus was making in the houmrya. Faeterus declared himself “breaker of worlds,” when the actual houmrya line was “maker of worlds.” With such twists, he was transforming an ancient poem of creation into an evocation of destruction.