"Anderson, Kevin J - Game 2 - Game Play" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

Enrod sat down on the raft, smelling the water and letting it carry him downstream. Before long, he stood up again and pushed the pole into the riverbed, gaining leverage and inching the raft across the current.
He had an appointment to keep. He had to destroy the other half of the world.
Fallen trees thrust up from the surface like the fingers of drowning men. The water itself roiled brown and muddy, still cutting its channel and bearing debris from its journey. Beneath the current, Enrod imagined forests, houses, the skeletons of travelers, wandering monsters, all who had been caught in the flood. According to the map of Gamearth, the new course of the Barrier River had swallowed up an entire village.
The current brushing against the sides of his raft seemed to whisper to him, all the dead voices gurgling up from the river bottom begging Enrod for revenge. How could any character dare to do this? What right did they have?
He would lay waste to the land, turn hexagon after hexagon to flames and ash. He would destroy it all, level it.
The raft lurched, as if it struck an unseen bump in the River. Enrod swayed and regained his balance. The brown silty water flattened out like glass in front of him. A streak of light, yellow and searing, shot back and forth beneath the surface. The smell of ozone, like the air after a thunderstorm, drifted up to him.
Everything grew quiet, deathly quiet, but the air seemed charged with crackling power. Enrod tensed, confused.
Deep beneath the water foam bubbled up, disturbing the smooth surface. The churning increased until spray gushed to the sky. Mist appeared from nowhere, swathing the horizon and leaving him isolated in the middle of the River.
Enrod pulled up his wooden staff, holding it in his hands like a weapon. He let the raft drift, but it remained in place, anchored invisibly from below.
The bubbles gushed higher, then opened up like a gigantic mouth, a trap door letting something _emerge_.
A triple shadow lifted itself from the depths of the water, rising ... and kept rising, filling Enrod with awe. Three forms, hooded and spectral, clad in black tattered cloaks, pouring upward into the sky. His bones vibrated with thunder beyond the range of his hearing.
The three figures surged with dark power until they towered over the Sentinel, impossibly high. Their attention focused down on him like sharpened spears.
Enrod could not move.
He had seen them once before, two centuries ago, on the field of the Transition. They had not spoken then, but hung in the air surrounded by fallen empty bodies of the Sorcerers and grass and mountains in the distance. In silence, they had departed with their three white counterparts, the Earthspirits. Enrod thought they would never come back. All the characters on Gamearth had given up on them.
The Deathspirits.
The buzzing dark presence suddenly left Enrod's head, deserting him entirely. Without the driving force, he was disoriented, like a marionette with severed strings. He couldn't remember anything for a moment. He looked at the Fire Stone in his hand and realized what he had been about to do. He couldn't understand what had been possessing him.
The ruby Stone leaped out of his hand, wrenched away with such force that its sharp corners sliced his fingers. He felt blood running down his palm, but he could not take his eyes away from the immense Spirits. The Fire Stone rose in the air, spinning and glittering far out of reach.
All three Deathspirits spoke in unison. The words echoed on the wind with such power that Enrod felt his bones humming, his eardrums straining.
"We created the Fire Stone to _protect_ Gamearth and our half-breed children. We cannot allow the Stone to be turned to such destruction."
Enrod collapsed to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. He felt on fire, under the intensity of a magnifying lens focused on the sun.
"You would have abused your great power, Enrod. Unforgiveable.
"You will _never_ cross this River.
"You will _never_ go back to your home until the end of the Game.
"You must take this raft back and forth forever, at the mercy of any other character who intends to help the world. Not once to rest, not once to reach shore."
Enrod could not move. He wanted to hide, he wanted to beg forgiveness, he wanted to jump off the raft and drown himself in the River. But his muscles locked him in place.
"Gamearth faces a threat from Outside that could destroy everything. And so we have returned. Our world may not yet be doomed.
"But you have doomed yourself."
With a howl of cold wind, the cloaked figures sank beneath the River. The water gurgled, then became glassy smooth. The Fire Stone vanished with a _pop_ into thin air.
Milky mist rose up in front of Enrod, blocking the far shore of the River. He turned, and the opposite shore had also vanished. He stared, wide-eyed in shock and dismay.
_I didn't mean it! I don't know what happened!_
But the Deathspirits were gone. He could not argue with them. He would never be able to argue again.
Enrod's muscles locked up. His blood turned to ice as the horror struck him, growing from the pit of his stomach until he wanted to crumble and die. All the work he had done for Taire, for Gamearth -- he couldn't understand what had come over him, what possessed him. Even now he was appalled by what he had thought of doing.
Enrod felt himself drawing deeper and deeper into his own mind, filling the emptiness where the black buzzing had once been. From now on, it would be his only refuge.
His body took control of itself. His arms lifted the pole and thrust it into the water, pushing down and seeking the bottom of the River.
Enrod looked straight ahead. His jaws ground together. His eyes widened. He could not move. He could only push his raft along, moving nowhere.
With aching arms, Enrod began his endless journey.
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Chapter 2:
SPIRITS IN THE NIGHT
"The six Spirits have gone from Gamearth and they will never return. Why have they abandoned us? Are our lives so trivial to them? How soon they forget everything they once were."
-- Sardun's memoirs
Delrael plodded to his bedchambers in the main building of the Stronghold. His head ached, his body felt stiff, and he wanted to explode from inactivity.
Once again he and the other characters had resolved nothing -- another day wasted, and they still had thought of no way to fight Scartaris, the Outsiders' evil creature growing in the east.
He hated all this talking and planning. He wanted to _go_ somewhere.
Delrael had returned to the Stronghold two weeks before with Vailret and Bryl, successful in their quest to create a Barrier River and to rescue the Sentinel Sardun's daughter, Tareah. But then they had learned from blind Paenar that the Barrier River would not stop Scartaris after all....
Every day, Vailret insisted that they meet with other characters to discuss the problem, to brainstorm. There had to be a way, Vailret said, there always had to be a way. He usually knew about things like that. To be fair, the Outsiders had to play by their own Rules, they needed to provide some solution to every problem they posed.
"Or maybe not, in this case," Delrael said.
No one could suggest a plan of action, not even Tareah. They knew too little about their enemy.
Delrael found it impossible to sit around and wait. He was a fighter trained to action, not discussion. He needed to meet a problem head on, to fight, to explore, go adventuring and, as the primary Rule of Gamearth dictated, _have fun_. When all else fails, go on a quest.
Finally, he and Vailret came to the conclusion that they should just head east. Maybe they could do something there if they tried. Perhaps Enrod, the full-blooded Sentinel in Taire, could help them....