"Sara Douglass - Redemption 3 - Crusader" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

bone and muscle and cartilage tear and rip, seeing the bright blood bubble from the StarSon's
mouth.

What had the boy been doing, wandering through the Maze with a beatific smile on his face while all the
Demons of Hell rode at his heels?
"There had been magic worked there," WolfStar whispered, inching his way further down whatever
dead-end of the Maze he'd chosen this time. "An enchantment ... Caelum was caught in enchantment...
but whose? Whose?"
Suddenly WolfStar was angry, and it chased away all his bleakness and humiliation. Someone — not
the Demons — had worked an enchantment on Caelum ... Who had control of enchantment in this
Star Danceless world?
And if someone did have control of enchantment, how could WolfStar work that to his own will?
"Who are you?" he whispered, now dragging himself along with one hand while the other held his
ruined belly in vaguely one piece. "Who are you?"
He repeated the sentence, over and over, making of it a mantra. He repeated it for hour after hour,
dragging himself through the Maze, ignoring the countless creatures — once-animal and once-human or
Icarii — that flowed about and over him. He continued to repeat it through the Demonic hour of dusk
that probed at his mind, and he continued to repeat it through the night until it almost drove him mad.
At dawn, as the light broke over the Maze, WolfStar realised something.
He was not mad. And he was not dead. Neither madness nor Demon had touched him, or even
taken any interest in him. He had survived, for whatever reason and for whatever purpose.
And he had to have a purpose, because without a purpose he was nothing but a pawn.
A glow of light filtered down through the stone walls of the Maze, lighting the flagstones before him.
A million symbols flowed over and through the stone. The Maze, taunting him.
"Damn you! Damn you!" WolfStar whispered, furious that the Star Dance and the Maze had
manipulated him for so many millennia. From the heights of power, the glory days of thinking that all
Tencendor danced to his manipulations, WolfStar had fallen to being nothing but a useless puppet
crawling through the stone corridors of the Maze.
A Talon-Enchanter with no more power than an ant.
"No!"
No, he could not bear that. There was power out there somewhere — he could feel it! — and that
meant there was power available for the taking.
And he would take it. No-one would laugh at WolfStar!
"Who are you?" he whispered over and over as he crawled hand-over-hand across the rough stone.
"Who are you?"
As crazed birds tumbled through the sky above his head, so plans and intrigues tumbled through
WolfStar's mind.
 There was power out there, and he would find a way to control it.
"Who are you? Who are you?"
WolfStar crawled for hours, lost in his own thoughts, his anger giving him strength when he should
have collapsed, until eventually he thought he heard something whisper. He raised his head, and stared.
Then he laughed, knowing hope for the first time in many days.
Ten paces ahead rose the gateway into the wasteland.

Chapter 5

Of Sundry Enemies

"This land is not enough," Sheol whispered. "We need the
entire world and all its souls to feed from. When can we take it all?"