"Paul S. Kemp - Erevis Cale 3 - Midnight's Mask" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kemp Paul S)

thought he did. Riven’s betrayal had been planned, or at
least Cale thought it had. Unless he had dreamed it. . . .
Beside him, Magadon rolled over with a groan, still
breathing hard.
“Demon’s teeth,” the guide swore, and his voice echoed
loudly, jarring in the silence.
Beside Magadon, Jak sat up with a groan of his own.
He looked around blindly, eyes wide. “I can’t see a thing.
Cale?”
Cale had become so accustomed to his ability to see

6 • Paul S. Kemp
perfectly in darkness that he forgot that others could not.
The chamber was as dark as a devil’s heart, thick with the
black air of the Plane of Shadow.
“Here, little man,” he answered, and reached out a hand
to touch Jak’s shoulder. The halfling clutched his hand and
gave it a brief squeeze.
“I will get a light,” Magadon said. He unstrapped
his pack and searched for a sunrod. Cale remembered
that Magadon’s fiendish heritage allowed him to see in
the darkness, probably not as well as a shade, but well
enough.
Cale stood, wincing as the last of his wounds closed.
“Can the Skulls track us? ” Magadon asked as he
searched his pack.
Cale had not considered that. “I don’t see how,” he said
after a moment’s thought. As far as he knew, his ability to
walk the shadows between worlds left no footprints.
The guide nodded, found the sunrod he sought within
his pack. He struck it on the chamber floor and the
alchemical substance on its tip flared to life. He held
it aloft and lit the cavern—dimly. The darkness gave
ground only grudgingly.
Jak and Magadon blinked in the sudden illumination,
but Cale felt a part of him boil away in the sunrod’s light.
He refused to cover his eyes despite the sting. His shadow
hand, he was pleased to see, had not disappeared. Per-
haps only real sunlight could cause that.
“The Plane of Shadow,” Jak observed, eyeing their
surroundings. “But where this time? This is not where
we were before.”
A large natural cavern opened around them. Loose
stone and stalagmites covered the uneven floor. Irregu-
larly shaped holes in the walls opened onto tunnels
that led into darkness. An oily black substance clung in
patches to the stone. It shimmered in the sunrod’s light
like polished basalt. Water dripped from the stalactite-
dotted ceiling to fall into a dark pool in the center of the