"Alan Dean Foster - Catechist 3 - A Triumph Of Souls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

The Worm arose.

It burst forth from the earth, shedding dirt and uprooted fungi from its flanks. Pellucid mucus glistened
along the length of its body. A length that no man, not even Hymneth the Possessed, had ever measured.
The Worm might be ten feet long, or twenty, or a hundred. Or it might curl and coil all the way through
to the other side of the Earth. No one knew. No one would ever know, because attempting the knowing
meant death. Of all men, only Hymneth had power enough to meet the Worm in this place, chiseled out
of the solid rock halfway between air and earth, and survive.

It lifted above him, shimmering and immense, its great tubular body arching forward like that of a
questing serpent. Its upper girth, if not its length, was measurable. From where it emerged from the
ground to its head it was as thick around as a good-sized tree. The last eight feet of it tapered to an
almost comically small mouth, no bigger around than a barrel. From this darted and fluttered, like the
tongue of a snake, a long, wet, flexible organ tipped with four tapering, sharp fangs that pointed forward.
It was not a tongue, but a device for piercing the body of prey and sucking out their soft insides. The
Worm’s diet was varied—it would eat dirt as readily as blood.

Darting away from their master’s side, the twin eromakadi began to feast on the light emitted by the
bioluminescent fungi. Completely enveloping a helpless mushroom or toadstool, they would hover thus
until its light had been consumed before moving on to another, leaving behind a shriveled and dying
lump where before there had been life, however humble.

The Worm too pulsed with its own pale, necrotic glow, but they kept clear of that massive, hovering
body. Not because they were afraid of it, but because they knew it was there to meet their master. And of

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 A Triumph of Souls: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 3

all the things in the world, the eromakadi feared only Hymneth the Possessed.

Vestigial eyes no larger than small coins focused on the tall, armored figure waiting on the lowermost of
the stone steps. Black as the eternal night in which they dwelled, they had neither pupils nor eyelids. But
they recognized the tall figure. Long ago, Worm and man had struck an accord. Hymneth provided the
Worm with—food. The Worm, in turn, kept a kind of watch over the realm of the Possessed. It had the
ability to sense disturbances in That Which Had Not Yet Happened. The great majority of these it
ignored.

But out on the fringes of the future it had detected something. Something active, and advancing, and
imbued with might. In keeping with the covenant it had made with the man, it duly remarked upon this
commotion.

“He comes. And he is not alone.”

Hymneth had lowered his arms. As the eromakadi spread small deaths throughout the chamber, he
concentrated on the tapering head of the Worm swaying high above his own. “Who comes, eater of dirt?”

The Worm’s voice was a high hollowness. “A master of the necromantic arts. A questioner of all that is
unanswered. One who seeks justice wherever he treads. He comes this way from across the Semordria.”