"Briggs, Patricia - Sianim 3 - When Demons Walk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Briggs Patricia)

cobbles of the street. She was still running, the dagger from her arm sheath in her hand, when she heard
Maur scream in a mixture of rage and terror that echoed hoarsely in the night.

As she reached the dark entrance she stopped, ingrained wariness forcing her to enter cautiously
when she wanted to rush in howling like a Uriah in full hunt. She listened for a moment, but other than the
initial cry the cottage was still.

As she stepped across the threshold, the tangy smell of blood assailed her nose. Panicked at the
thought of losing the old wizard as she had everyone else, she recklessly flooded the small front room
with magelight. Blinking furiously, her eyes still accustomed to the dark, she noticed that there was blood
everywhere, as if a cloud of the stuff had covered the walls.

The Old Man was on his knees in the corner, one arm raised over his face, bleeding from hundreds
of small cuts that shredded clothes and skin alike. There was no one else in the room.

“Master!” she cried out.

At the sound of her voice, he turned toward her. Urgently he said, “Go child, hurry. This is not your
battle.”

As he spoke, a broad red slice appeared on his upraised arm as if drawn there by an invisible artist.
Though she had caught a bare glimpse of something moving, it was gone before she could tell what it
was.

His command was voiced so strongly that Sham took a step backward before she caught herself.
The last magic her master had wrought was twelve years before. Blind and crippled, he was as helpless
as a child—she wasn’t about to leave him.

Her mouth firmed as another wound appeared, weeping blood down the side of his crippled hand.
She gestured, calling a simple spell of detection, hoping to locate the unseen attacker, but the magic in the
room was thick and obscured her spell. The assailant seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

She tried a spell to discover the kind of magic the assailant used so that she could try unworking his
magic. A cold chill rolled its way down her spine as her spell told her that whatever else it was, it was not
human. It was also not one of the creatures who could use natural magic, for what she’d sensed had no
connection to the forces stirred by the Spirit Tide. That left only a handful of creatures to choose from,
none of them very encouraging.

She dropped the useless dagger to the ground. When the blade clattered to the floor, the flute slid
into her hand, as if it had taken advantage of her inattention to slip out of the pocket in her sleeve.

As her fingers closed about its carved surface, it occurred to her that a thing did not have to be sharp
to be a weapon. She set the mouthpiece against her lips for the second time that evening and blew softly
through the instrument, letting the music fill the air. She would never be a bard-level musician, but she was
thankful for the years the Old Man had sought to instill his love of music in her.

As the first notes sounded in the room, she could feel the magic gathering, far more than she would
have been able to harness alone. It surrounded her, making her blood sing like rushing water with the
heady vortex of power. She would pay for it later, of course—that was the secret of the flute. More than
one mage had died after using it, not realizing until it was too late the cost of the power the flute called.