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

Katie, clinging to Faraday's skirts, grinning silently and secretly, and wondering if Faraday would
ever be able to accept the sacrifice.
Again.
Sanctuary was a brooding, sad place for something so apparently beauteous and peaceful.

Sanctuary was proving unbearable for yet one more man.
Axis had spent his life controlling the world that battered at his doorstep. As BattleAxe he had
theoretically been subordinate to the Brother-Leader of the Seneschal, but in reality had largely
controlled his own destiny as he had the destinies of his command. As a newly-discovered
Enchanter he had found he had much to learn, but had gloried in that learning and the added power it
gave him (as in the woman it brought him). As StarMan, Axis had held the fate of an entire land and all its
peoples in his hand, and he had held it well, plunging the Rainbow Sceptre into Gorgrael's chest and
reclaiming the land for the Icarii and Avar.
Yet in the past year Axis had learned that he'd only been a pawn in some Grand Plan of this
ancient race known as the Enemy, and an even tinier pawn of the Star Dance itself which had
manipulated not only the Enemy, but every creature on Tencendor.
And for what? To breed the battleground and the champion to best the most ancient of enemies;
festering evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons.
"We have all been for nothing," Axis whispered to himself, "save to provide the Star Dance with the
implements for whatever final act it has planned."
And what part would he play in that plan?
"And damn you to every pit of every damned AfterLife," Axis murmured, "for making of me a mere
pawn where once I had been a god!"
Then he laughed, for it was impossible not to so laugh at his own frustrated sense of importance.
Axis consciously relaxed his shoulders, and looked about him.
It was a fine, warm day in Sanctuary — as were all days — and he was walking down the road
from Sanctuary towards the bridge (at last! to have escaped the confinement of unlimited safety!). To
either side of him waved pastel flowers, wafting gentle scent in the soft breeze. The plain between the
mountains that cradled Sanctuary and the bridge that led from the sunken Keep apparently stretched into
infinity on either side of the road, and Axis wondered what would happen if he set off to his left
or right. Would the magic of Sanctuary eventually return him to the spot from which he had commenced,
even though he walked in a deliberately straight line? Would he be allowed to escape the glorious
inaction of Sanctuary?
"I wonder if I might ever manage to —" Axis began in a musing tone, then halted, stunned.
A moment previously he had been a hundred paces from the bridge, he could have sworn it! Yet
now here he was, one booted foot resting on the silvery surface of the bridge's roadway.
"Welcome, Axis SunSoar, StarMan," the bridge said. "May I assist you?"
Axis grinned. The bridge sounded as enthusiastic as an exhausted whore on her way home after a
laborious night's work entertaining her clientele. His grin broadened at the thought. The bridge had borne
a heavy load of bodies recently, after all.
And every one of them to be questioned as to the trueness of their intentions.
"Well," he said, and leaned his crossed arms on the handrail so he could peer into the clouded
depths of the chasm below the bridge. "I admit I grow lonesome for some witty conversation, bridge,
and I remembered the pleasant nights I spent whiling away the sleepless hours with your sister."
And was she still alive, Axis suddenly wondered, in the maelstrom that had consumed Tencendor?
"She has ever had a more companionable time than I," grumbled the bridge. "Here I sat,
spanning the depths between your world and Sanctuary, desperate for company yet hoping I would
never find it."
Axis nodded in understanding. Company would have meant — did mean — that
complete disaster threatened the world above.