"Dragonlance - Legends 03 - Test of the Twins - Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragonlance)

"A what?"
"Mmmmm," Tas mumbled. Caramon sucked in his breath. "A moon!" Tas said quickly.
"Moon!" repeated Caramon incredulously. "Which moon?" he asked after a moment, glancing around. "Oh"-Tas shrugged-"any of the three. I suppose one's as good as another. Quite similar, I should imagine. Except, of course, that Solinari would have all glittering silver rocks and Lunitari all bright red rocks, and I guess the other one would be all black, though I can't say for sure, never having seen-"
Caramon growled at this point, and Tas decided it might be best to hold his tongue. He did, too, for about three minutes during which time Caramon continued to look around at their surroundings with a solemn face. But it would have taken more holding than the kender had inside him (or a sharp knife) to keep his tongue from talking longer than that.
"Caramon," he blurted out, "do-do you think we actually did it? Went to a-uh-moon, that is? I mean, this certainly doesn't look like anyplace I've ever been before. Not that these rocks are silver or red or even black. They're more of a rock color, but-"
"I wouldn't doubt it," Caramon said gloomily. "After all, you did take us to a seaport city that was sitting squarely in the middle of a desert-"
"That wasn't my fault either!" Tas said indignantly. "Why even Tanis said-"
"Still"-Caramon's face creased in puzzlement "this place certainly looks strange, but it seems familiar somehow."
"You're right," said Tas after a moment, staring around again at the bleak, ash-choked landscape. "It does remind me of somewhere, now that you mention it. Only"-the kender shivered-"I don't recall ever having been anyplace quite this awful ... except the Abyss," he added, but he said it under his breath.
The boiling clouds surged nearer and nearer as the two spoke, casting a further pall over the barren land. A hot wind sprang up, and a fine rain began to fall, mingling with the ash drifting through the air. Tas was just about to comment on the slimy quality of the rain when suddenly, without warning, the world blew up.
At least that was Tas's first impression. Brilliant, blinding light, a sizzling sound, a crack, a boom that shook the ground, and Tasslehoff found himself sitting in the gray mud, staring stupidly at a gigantic hole that had been blasted in the rock not a hundred feet away from him.
"Name of the gods!" Caramon gasped. Reaching down, he dragged Tas to his feet. "Are you all right?"
"I-I think so," said Tas, somewhat shaken. As he watched, lightning streaked again from the cloud to ground, sending rock and ash hurtling through the air. "My! That certainly was an interesting experience. Though nothing I'd care to repeat right away," he added hastily, fearful that the sky, which was growing darker and darker by the minute, might decide to treat him to that interesting experience all over again.
"Wherever we are, we better get off this high ground," Caramon muttered. "At least there's a trail. It must lead somewhere."
Glancing down the mud-choked trail into the equally mud-choked valley below, Tas had the fleeting thought that Somewhere was likely to be every bit as gray and yucky as Here, but, after a glimpse of Caramon's grim face, the kender quickly decided to keep his thoughts to himself.
As they slogged down the trail through the thick mud, the hot wind blew harder, driving specks of blackened wood and cinders and ash into their flesh. Lightning danced among the trees, making them burst into balls of bright green or blue flame. The ground shook with the concussive roar of the thunder. And still, the storm clouds massed on the horizon. Caramon hurried their pace.
As they labored down the hillside they entered what must once have been, Tas imagined, a beautiful valley. At one time, he guessed, the trees here must have been ablaze with autumn oranges and golds, or misty green in the spring. Here and there, he saw spirals of smoke curling up, only to be whipped away immediately by the storm wind. Undoubtedly from more lightning strikes, he thought. But, in an odd sort of way, that reminded him of something, too. Like Caramon, he was becoming increasingly convinced that he knew this place.
Wading through the mud, trying to ignore what the icky stuff was doing to his green shoes and bright blue leggings, Tas decided to try an old kender trick To Use When Lost. Closing his eyes and blotting everything from his mind, he ordered his brain to provide him with a picture of the landscape before him. The rather interesting kender logic behind this being that since it was likely that some kender in Tasslehoff's family had undoubtedly been to this place before, the memory was somehow passed on to his or her descendants. While this was never scientifically verified (the gnomes are working on it, having referred it to committee), it certainly is true that-to this day-no kender has ever been reported lost on Krynn.
At any rate, Tas, standing shin-deep in mud, closed his eyes and tried to conjure up a picture of his surroundings. One came to him, so vivid in its clarity that he was rather startled-certainly his ancestors' mental maps had never been so perfect. There were trees-giant trees-there were mountains on the horizon, there was a lake....
Opening his eyes, Tas gasped. There was a lake! He hadn't noticed it before, probably because it was the same gray, sludge color as the ash-covered ground. Was there water there, still? Or was it filled with mud?
I wonder, Tas mused, if Uncle Trapspringer ever visited a moon. If so, that would account for the fact that I recognize this place. But surely he would have told someone.... Perhaps he would have if the goblins hadn't eaten him before he had the chance. Speaking of food, that reminds me ...
"Caramon," Tas shouted over the rising wind and the boom of the thunder. "Did you bring along any water? I didn't. Nor any food, either. I didn't suppose we'd need any, what with going back home and all. But-"
Tas suddenly saw something that drove thoughts of food and water and Uncle Trapspringer from his mind.
"Oh, Caramon!" Tas clutched at the big warrior, pointing. "Look, do you suppose that's the sun?"
"What else would it be?" Caramon snapped gruffly, his gaze on a watery, greenish-yellow disk that had appeared through a rift in the storm clouds. "And, no, I didn't bring any water. So just keep quiet about it, huh?"
"Well, you needn't be ru-" Tas began. Then he saw Caramon s face and quickly hushed.
They had come to a halt, slipping in the mud, halfway down the trail. The hot wind blew about them, sending Tas's topknot streaming out from his head like a banner and whipping Caramon's cloak out. The big warrior was staring at the lake-the same lake Tas had noticed. Caramon's face was pale, his eyes troubled. After a moment, he began walking again, trudging grimly down the trail. With a sigh, Tas squished along after him. He had reached a decision.
"Caramon," he said, "let's get out of here. Let's leave this place. Even if it is a moon like Uncle Trapspringer must have visited before the goblins ate him, it isn't much fun. The moon, I mean, not being eaten by goblins which I suppose wouldn't be much fun either, come to think of it. To tell you the truth, this moon's just about as boring as the Abyss and it certainly smells as bad. Besides, there I wasn't thirsty. . . . Not that I'm thirsty now," he added hastily, remembering too late that he wasn't supposed to talk about it, "but my tongue's sort of dried out, if you know what I mean, which makes it hard to talk. We've got the magical device." He held the jewel encrusted sceptre-shaped object up in his hand, just in case Caramon had forgotten in the last half-hour what it looked like. "And I promise ... I solemnly vow ... that I'll think of Solace with all my brain this time, Caramon. I-Caramon?"
"Hush, Tas," Caramon said.
They had reached the valley floor, where the mud was ankle-deep on Caramon, which made it about shin-deep on
Tas. Caramon had begun to limp again from when he'd fallen and wrenched his knee back in the magical fortress of Zhaman. Now, in addition to worry, there was a look of pain on his face.
There was another look, too. A look that made Tas feel all prickly inside-a look of true fear. Tas, startled, glanced about quickly, wondering what Caramon saw. It seemed pretty much the same at the bottom as it had at the top, he thought-gray and yucky and horrible. Nothing had changed, except that it was growing darker. The storm clouds had obliterated the sun again, rather to Tas's relief, since it was an unwholesome-looking sun that made the bleak, gray landscape appear worse than ever. The rain was falling harder as the storm clouds drew nearer. Other than that, there certainly didn't appear to be anything frightening.
The kender tried his best to keep silent, but the words just sort of leaped out of his mouth before he could stop them. "What's the matter, Caramon? I don't see anything. Is your knee bothering you? I-"
"Be quiet, Tas!" Caramon ordered in a strained, tight voice. He was staring around him, his eyes wide, his hands clenching and unclenching nervously.
Tas sighed and clapped his hand over his mouth to bottle up the words, determined to keep quiet if it killed him. When he was quiet, it suddenly occurred to him that it was so very quiet around here. There was no sound at all when the thunder wasn't thundering, not even the usual sounds he was used to hearing when it rained-water dripping from tree leaves and plopping onto the ground, the wind rustling in the branches, birds singing their rain songs, complaining about their wet feathers....
Tas had a strange, quaking feeling inside. He looked at the stumps of the burned trees more closely. Even burned, they were huge, easily the largest trees he had ever seen in his life except for
Tas gulped. Leaves, autumn colors, the smoke of cooking fires curling up from the valley, the lake-blue and smooth as crystal ...
Blinking, he rubbed his eyes to clear them of the gummy film of mud and rain. He stared around him, looking back up at the trail, at that huge boulder. . . . He stared at the lake that he could see quite clearly through the burned tree stumps. He stared at the mountains with their sharp, jagged peaks. It wasn't Uncle Trapspringer who'd been here before...... Oh, Caramon!" he whispered in horror.
Chapter 2
"What is it?" Caramon turned, looking at Tas so strangely that the kender felt his inside prickly feeling spread to his outside. Little bumps appeared all up and down his arms.
"N-nothing," Tas stammered. "Just my imagination. Caramon," he added urgently, "let's leave! Right now. We can go anywhere we want to! We can go back in time to when we were all together, to when we were all happy! We can go back to when Flint and Sturm were alive, to when Raistlin still wore the red robes and Tika-"
"Shut up, Tas," snapped Caramon warningly, his words accented by a flash of lightning that made even the kender flinch.
The wind was rising, whistling through the dead tree stumps with an eerie sound, like someone drawing a shivering breath through clenched teeth. The warm, slimy rain had ceased. The clouds above them swirled past, revealing the pale sun shimmering in the gray sky. But on the horizon, the clouds continued to mass, continued to grow blacker and blacker.
Multicolored lightning flickered among them, giving them a distant, deadly beauty.
Caramon started walking along the muddy trail, gritting his teeth against the pain of his injured leg. But Tas, looking down that trail that he now knew so well-even though it was appallingly different-could see to where it rounded a bend. Knowing what lay beyond that bend, he stood where he was, planted firmly in the middle of the road, staring at Caramon's back.
After a few moments of unusual silence, Caramon realized something was wrong and glanced around. He stopped, his face drawn with pain and fatigue.
"C'mon, Tas!" he said irritably.
Twisting his topknot of hair around his finger, Tas shook his head.
Caramon glared at him.
Tas finally burst out, "Those are vallenwood trees, Caramon!"