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

The Hawkchild jumped back, hissing. For an instant, just for an instant, he thought he'd heard the
whispering of a many-branched forest.
A whispering? No, an angry crackling, more like.
The Hawkchild backed away two more paces, spreading his wings for flight.
 But he stopped in that heartbeat before he should have lifted into the air. The whispering had gone
now — had it ever existed save, in the dark spaces of his mind? — and the object looked
innocuous, safe ... save ... save for that irritating sense of power emanating from it.
This object was a thing of magic. A fairly sorry object, granted, but mayhap his master
might find it amusing.
The Hawkchild hopped forward, flapped his wings so he rose in the air a short distance, and
grasped the object between his talons.
A heartbeat later he was gone, rising into a thermal that would carry him south-west into
the throbbing, blackened heart of the wasteland.

Qeteb laughed, and the wasteland cringed.
"He thinks himself safe in whatever hideaway he has built for himself," he whispered (and yet that
whisper sounded as a roar in the mind of all who could hear him). "And when I find it ... when I find its
secret..."
The Midday Demon strode stiff-legged about the interior of the Dark Tower, his arms flung back, his
metalled wings rasping across the flagged flooring of the mausoleum.
He screamed, then bellowed, then roared with laughter again.
It felt so good to be whole once more! Nevermore would he allow himself to be trapped.
Qeteb jerked to a halt, and his eyes, hidden beneath his black-visored helmet, fell on the woman
standing in the gloom under one of the columned arches.
She was rather more beautiful than not, with luminous dark hair, a sinuous body beneath her stained
and rust-splotched robe, and wings that had been combed into a feathered neatness trailing invitingly
from her back.
Qeteb wondered how loudly she would scream if he steadied her with one fist on her shoulder, and
tore a wing out with the other fist.
She said she was his mother, but Qeteb found he did not like to hear what she said. He was
complete within himself, a oneness that needed no other, and he had certainly never been entrapped in
her vile womb. She had never provided him with life!
But she had provided him his flesh, and for that Qeteb spared her the agony of sudden
de-wingment.
For the moment.
There was a movement from another side and Qeteb almost smiled. There, the soulless body
of a woman, waiting for him. He lusted, for he found her very soullessness inviting and reached for
her, but was distracted by the voice of Sheol from beyond the doorway.
"Great Father. One of the Hawkchilds has returned with —"
"With the gateway to the StarSon's den?" Qeteb demanded.
"No," Sheol said, and stepped inside. Behind her walked a Hawkchild, carrying something in its
hands.
"Great Father!" the Hawkchild said, and dropped to one knee before Qeteb. "See what I
have discovered for you!"
He placed the object on the ground before Qeteb, and the Midday Demon looked down.
It was a wooden bowl, carved from a single block of warm, red wood.
Qeteb instinctively loathed it, and just as instinctively knew that it would bring him great fortune.

Beyond the mausoleum the Maze swarmed with creatures dark of visage and of mind; the vast
majority of demented creatures within the wasteland had found their way to the land's