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

Sheol's eyes widened. "Think that will hurt me?"
DareWing grinned yet more, and waved at the choir behind him, floating in the thermals rising from
the black peaks below.
Their singing doubled, if not in volume, then in intensity.
Many among the Icarii were crying with the strength of their emotion — with the strength of their joy.
Sheol hissed, and wriggled back a little. "You cannot hurt me with that!"
"No?" whispered DareWing. "No? What would happen, Sheol, if I could make you sing a verse?
Hmm? Would you like to try? Now, come on. You have heard enough to know the words, surely.
Come, sing with me ... Feather drifting, Skyway beckoning..."
DareWing flew towards her with a hand outstretched. "Come ... Freedom flight, Never
ending.'"
She snarled, and wriggled further away. "Think that pitiful song will destroy me?"
No, maybe not, DareWing thought, but it is a step in the right direction. And then hope did consume
him, and he knew beyond any doubt that DragonStar would find the way to defeat these Demons.
"Get.you gone, Sheol," DareWing snapped, "for you are not welcome here in these wastes."
She stared, not knowing what to do, wondering if somehow this entire episode was meant to be a
preamble to one of the preordained challenges, and, if so, what she should do about it. Then, fortuitously,
Qeteb touched her mind.
Come back! Come back! We have a visitor.
"Fool!" Sheol shot at DareWing as a form of goodbye, then she flowed her form back into that of
the winged serpent, and retreated back south.

Chapter 19
 TheApple


Spiredore deposited Isfrael in the Demons' den. It surprised him. Somehow Isfrael had expected
something truly horrific: a seething atmosphere of flames and acidic smoke filled with the
screams of the tormented and the stink of the damned. A chamber furnished with rocks and
chasms, and with blood-rusted spikes to embrace welcome and unwelcome visitors alike.
Instead the Demons had constructed for themselves a boudoir of pleasantness. There was a circle of
apple trees, stunted, true, but sweetly fruited nevertheless, and an inner circle of stumps each topped with
a tasselled violet or scarlet cushion. Overhead spread a sky that was only mildly stained with
grey-streaked clouds.
The only aspect that was truly unpleasant was the torn and half-eaten body of a dog that lay to one
side (possibly the remains of a picnic) and, of course, the Demons themselves.
They each stood between and very slightly behind the apple trees. A silent, watchful semicircle. Four
were clad in pastel robes of varying hues, their faces bland, their eyes glowing like gems.
Qeteb had not varied his dull black armour, and trailed his metalled wings on the ground behind him
in a parody of the Icarii gesture of welcome.
When he stepped forward, as he did now, they gouged great wounds into the earth.
"And you are ...?" he inquired. He stopped just under one of the apple trees. As Qeteb moved,
Isfrael could see that behind him lay the form of the Niah-woman. She was arranged neatly,
her legs straight, her arms at her side, her eyes gazing upwards without thought or warmth.
Isfrael walked forward until he stood just before the inner circle of stumps. Qeteb was directly
across the clearing from him.
"My name is Isfrael," he said, "and I am Mage-King of the Avar, Lord of the Forests."
One of the other Demons, the female, smirked, and Qeteb make a quick gesture to stop her
laughing.