"Mark A. Garland - Demonblade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garland Mark A)

Prologue
Ergris stood close to the trunk of the massive old oak that marked the north edge of the clearing,
watching. For many days there had been no sound or movement at the human's hut. No smoke rose from
the earthen chimney despite the morning's chill. The Old One could have been out in the wood gathering
herbs or getting his walk, but the hut itself had a slightly tattered look; a scattering of branches from the
roof lay at the base of the walls, and bits of wall lay with them. Most of all, the aura of the man was gone.

The Old One had always kept a tidy clearing. Now small seedlings grew everywhere about the yard and
weeds choked the gardens. In all his years coming to visit here, with his elders or friends or even, in
recent years, alone, Ergris had never seen this so.

He felt a pang of sorrow as his thoughts came round. The Old One had made the forest bloom where
fires had touched it, had saved the dying bog during the dry years tenfold and tenfold years ago. And he
told the most wonderful stories!

Too aged and frail to do any but the slightest physical tasks, it was the Old One's spell-weavings that
had kept his home and land from the steady press of the living forest, and kept him hidden from the eyes
of hunters and fools who wandered near these past few decades. Indeed, it was this talent with spells that
had brought about the deaths of the first leshy to approach the hut, so many years ago. . . .

Ergris could not call out, leshy having neither the voice nor the disposition to allow such a thing in the
quiet of the woods. He waited until the morning was nearly gone, eyeing every corner of the clearing,
even circling it several times as he had done the day before, to be certain of things. Finally he made his
way to the front door. He found it closed and boarded from the inside.

As he stood scratching his belly, dragging long sharp nails through the thin fur there, he decided that a
simple favor was needed. He twitched his short muzzle, thinking his plan out exactly, then he cleared his
throat, closed his eyes, and felt for the presence of the stout oak board on the other side of the door. He
remembered the piece well; he had even placed it in the wooden brackets himself more than once, during
evenings when he and the Old One would speak of man and leshy, of worlds long past and others to
come—together alone, the two of them.

The oaken board was there, and Ergris began to woo it aside. Yet even as he did, the possibilities made
him uneasy—magical traps, hidden deaths—humans had been known to lose their minds, or simply
change them. Most of them were horrible creatures. He pressed on, caressing the wood with his mind.

Ergris knew no fear in his own forest, unlike human kings, who feared to go beyond their own
bedchambers without armor and weapons. And Ergris considered himself the wisest, strongest leshy king
of all. The Old One—Ramins, as he called himself—was wise in many ways, and he had taught Ergris
such things as no leshy king before him had been taught. But Ergris had initiated the talks knowing the
risks were great. He still recalled the first two leshy who had tried to climb one on the other into the hut's
only window, their petrified bodies lying piled up next to the wall for weeks, until Ergris had come with a
party in the deepest depths of night to take them away.

But it was not curiosity, posturing, or even lack of good sense that finally brought Ergris out of the forest
to confront old Ramins at the stream one day. In part the attraction was the wizard's own potent aura,
but more, Ergris was drawn to the other aura that came from within the human's dwelling, that of
something made by the gods themselves—a blade of some kind, Ergris was certain. He had sensed it