"Sara Douglass - The Axis Trilogy 3 - StarMan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

god, Hedemanded it, and Artor liked it not that those gods He had banished so long ago might soon
walk this land again.

Jayme had failed Artor so badly and so completely that the god Himself had been forced from His
heavenly kingdom to exact retribution from Brother-Leader Jayme for his pitiful failure to lead the
Seneschal against the challenge of the StarMan.

What have you done, Jayme?

Jayme shuddered, and found that Artor had freed those muscles he needed to speak with. "I have
done my best, Lord," he whispered.

Meet My eyes, Jayme, and know the god that you promised to serve.

Jayme tried to keep his eyes tightly shut, but the god's power tore them open - and Jayme screamed.

Standing before him was a man-figure, yet taller and more heavily musclebound than any man Jayme
had ever seen before. Artor had chosen to reveal Himself in the symbolic attire of the ploughman: the
rough linen loincloth, the short leather cape thrown carelessly over His shoulders, its hood drawn close
about Artor's face, and thick rope sandals. In one hand Artor held the traditional goad used to urge the
plough team onwards; the other hand He had clenched in the fist of righteous anger.



Underneath the leather hood of His cape Artor had assumed the heavy, pitted features of a man
roughened by years of tilling the soil, while His body was roped with the thick muscles needed to control
the team and the cumbersome wheeled plough.

And underlying this immensely powerful and angry physical presence was the roiling fury of a god
scorned and rejected by many of those who had once served Him.

Artor's eyes glittered with black rage.Daily My power diminishes as the Seneschal crumbles into
dust. Daily the souls of the Acharites are claimed by other, less deserving gods. For this I hold you
responsible.

"I could not have foreseen -" Jayme began, but Artor raised the goad menacingly above His head and
took a powerful step forwards, and Jayme fell into silence.

The power of the Mother threatens to spill over into this land as the bitch you failed to stop prepares
to sow the seeds of the evil forest across Achar. The Star Gods now threaten to spread their cold light
through this land again.

"I had not the knowledge or the power to stop these gods of whom you speak -"

Yet you incubated the egg that would hatch the traitorous viper. You nursed the viper to your - toMy
-bosom! You raised him, you taught him, you gave him the power and the means, and then you
turned him loose to destroy all that I have worked to build.

"Axis! I could not have known that he -"
 Asthe Brotherhood of the Seneschal falls to its knees so the worship of the Plough fades and I