"Greenwood, Ed - Shandril 02 - Crown of Fire_v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

somewhere, being bumped and scraped along a rough stone passage and
through a door. Then hard, smooth wood was under her. She slumped down
on the seat, too exhausted to even be thankful, and heard the soldiers
who'd brought her here go out again, swordscabbards clanging against
stone. Then she saw the flickering blue glow ahead and forced herself to
focus and be alert. She was in the presence of magic.

As her gaze cleared, she saw a man sitting at a table in front of her --
a stout, fussy-looking man with a wispy beard. He seemed to be alone in
this gloomy, bare stone room. Alone until she arrived. He was looking
irritably over his shoulder at her, a shoulder that bore the purple
robes of a war wizard of Cormyr. The flickering blue radiance -- the
only light in the room -- was coming from a thin, gleaming long sword
floating horizontally in the air in front of the wizard.

Shandril let her eyes close to slits and her chin fall to her breast.
After a moment, the wizard shrugged and turned back to the floating
blade. Murmuring something to himself, he reached toward the blade and
made a certain gesture. Blue lightning crackled suddenly, coiling and
twisting along the gleaming steel like a snake spiraling around a
branch. Then there was a brief, soundless flash, and the reaching,
blue-white tongues of lightning were gone. The wizard nodded and wrote
something on a piece of parchment in front of him.

Then he tugged at his beard for a moment, spoke a single, distinct word
Shandril had never heard before, and made another gesture. This time
there was no response from the magical blade. The wizard made another
note.

Delg squinted up at the Purple Dragon commander. "In a breath or two,
I'll tell you all that," he said, "if you've time to listen by then.
There's near thirty Zhentilar riding on our heels, they'll be here very
soon."

The commander stared at him, saw that he was serious, and said, "Zhentil
Keep? Twill be a pleasure, Sir Dwarf, to turn them back." He made no
move to call his men to arms, but nodded his head at the guardhouse into
which Shandril had been taken. "So speak, what befell?"

Delg turned to look east. His hand glided swiftly to the reassuring
hardness of his axe. "She won time for us to escape, blasting a score of
Zhents out of their saddles. Unfortunately, there are more, and all her,
ah, magic is gone."

The captain was not a stupid man. His eyes widened for a moment as the
dwarf spoke of magic -- younger than most spell-hurlers, that lass. His
eyes narrowed again an instant later as he too turned to look at the
horizon. His face changed, and he shouted, "Down! 'Ware arrows!"

A hail of shafts answered him, thudding into the turf many paces short