"Gray, Julia - Guardian 01 - The Dark Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

It was hardly surprising that Shahan would figure in Terrel's dreams that night, but the old man's fleeting appearances told him nothing, and were only one element in a chaotic mixture of sounds and images. He dreamt of fire bursting from the earth in great red waves, heard music drifting over distant, misty hills and saw horses crashing through the undergrowth beneath gigantic trees. He saw the world overlaid with gleaming lines and translucent particles that shifted constantly, forming and reforming into patterns that were both beautiful and precise. He dreamt of Alyssa's eyes looking out from the face of an owl before it flew away, leaving him alone with only the stars for company - until the Dark Moon obliterated them too. He felt the red hatred, as malevolent as ever but further away this time, so that it was a remote presence, lacking any real threat as long as he did not try to oppose it.
It was only at the very end of his ephemeral journey, in the twilight time before he awoke, that Terrel sensed the rush of violence, the sudden impact of short-lived pain which soon gave way to oblivion. He was both the hunter and his prey, and the chase filled him with an unruly jumble of emotions; malicious satisfaction, cold horror, utter confusion and a lingering frustration that not even the final darkness could swallow. He knew all the time that he was not the master of his own fate, that he - like those around him - was being driven by forces outside himself. The dream ended with a familiar mocking laughter ringing in his ears, laughter that made his blood run cold.
Several miles away, as the first pale glow of dawn crept across their camp, two soldiers of the Imperial Guard stood looking at the body of a third man who lay on the ground between them. A crossbow bolt protruded from between the corpse's shoulder blades.
'What were you thinking, Marik?' the captain asked.
The younger man hesitated, his face a picture of uncertainty and fear.
'He ... he was trying to escape,' he replied eventually.
'Rivas and Zanelli didn't think so,' the captain said, naming the two men who had been on sentry duty for the latter part of the night. 'They say he was just going to take a leak in the trees.'
'But . . . but I saw him, sir.'
'From inside your tent? When you were asleep?'
'I woke up. I saw him and I knew.' Marik sounded stubborn now. 'He was getting away.'
'An old man? On foot?' the captain asked pointedly.
'How far do you think he'd have got before we caught him?'
'I did what I had to do, sir.'
'We were supposed to bring him back to Makhaya, not kill him!' the officer shouted angrily. 'How am I supposed to explain this to Mirival?'
'I don't know, sir,' the soldier replied, after a pause in which he seemed to be considering the possible repercussions of his hasty action for the first time. 'I was only following orders.'
'Oh, really?' The captain's voice was dangerously quiet now. 'And precisely whose orders were they?'
Marik did not answer, his confusion obviously deeper than ever.
'I suppose they came to you in a dream,' his commander remarked sarcastically, then became brisk and businesslike. 'Hand over your weapons. For the rest of this mission you are to consider yourself under arrest. I'll deal with you properly when we get back to the city.'
'Yes, sir,' Marik responded, doing his best to hide his dismay.
As the young man was led away by two stony-faced colleagues, the captain looked down at the seer's body. The old man appeared to have been shrunken by death and already seemed to have become part of the forest, his grey hair like some exotic lichen growing next to the moss and ferns. Marik's shot had been deadly accurate - he'd always been one of the unit's best archers - and Shahan had > hardly bled at all. The captain sighed wearily. This incident was not likely to do his own career prospects any good, but what was done was done. By all accounts the seer had been a traitor, and would have met with a similarly unpleasant end sooner or later. Even so, it was a shame to see such a life snuffed out in this ignominious manner. During the time he had pursued him from one end of Vadanis to the other, the captain had come to feel a grudging respect for his quarry. This was not the final scene he had envisaged for their duel.
'Truss him up and sling him across one of the pack horses,' he ordered, beckoning to some of the men nearby. 'He'll be as stiff as a board soon, so make it quick.'
Terrel had never seen Alyssa react in this way before. As soon as she entered his cell her eyes grew wide, the colour drained from her face, and she seemed to stare at nothing, gazing into the distance. All his anxious questions were waved away impatiently as she gestured for quiet, watching the echoes of his dreams - the echoes only she could see.
When, at last, she blinked and lowered her gaze, Terrel was bursting with curiosity. His own fragmented memories of the night's adventures were already beginning to fade, despite his efforts, but when he saw the expression on his friend's face he began to wonder if he really wanted to remember them.
'What is it?' he whispered. 'What have you seen?'
'It's very real,' Alyssa replied. 'Too real.'
'What do you mean?'
'It wasn't all yours, either,' she went on, adding to his misgivings.
'Just tell me what you saw,' he pleaded.
'The man who came to see you, did he have grey hair and a nose like a beak?'
'Yes,' he said, thrown by the apparent change of subject. 'Why?'
'He's dead.'
'What! How can you know?'
'You were there, in your dream.'
Terrel remembered the sensation of sudden violence and the confusion that had followed. He felt the cold horror again.
'How . . .'he began.
'Dreams are sometimes meant to show us things,' she explained.
'And I saw ... ?'
Alyssa nodded.
'The soldiers were camped overnight in a forest. He was walking away when one of them shot him with a crossbow. His spirit left then.'
'But it was only a dream,' Terrel protested helplessly. 'It doesn't mean it was real.'
'No.' Alyssa sounded quite certain. 'It happened. Others saw it too.'
'Others? Who?'
'I don't know. They were too far away to see - apart from the soldier, of course.'
'He was dreaming too?'
'That's why he acted as he did,' Alyssa confirmed.
'In his sleep?'
'No,' she replied patiently. 'He woke up.'
'And killed Shahan?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'