"Holly Lisle - World Gates 03 - Gods Old and Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)
The hyatvit—his mind touched by the coldness of Aril’s thoughts and the depth of Aril’s
anger—nodded, terror-stricken, and fled.
Rekkathav sent messages to each of the fieldmasters via the emergency communication
gates, then raced back to Aril’s side to await his next orders. No new orders were
forthcoming, however; instead, the Master of the Night Watch beckoned him to follow,
and floated at terrible speed to the enormous main doors of the Hub, the central nervous
system of the Night Watch’s reality-spanning organization.
The Master approached the doors of the Hub, stared at them for just an instant, then blew
them open with the force of his thoughts. They exploded off their hinges and buried
themselves in the marble floor, the metal twisted and ribboned like fruit peels. Everyone
within the Hub dove for cover.
“Not me,” Rekkathav whispered. He wore a resurrection ring driven through the skin fold
behind his right front powerleg, but he had not yet passed through his first death. He clung
to life, an old god but not yet a dark god, not yet fed by the power of death, and every time
he was faced with the possibility of his own first death he had second thoughts.
To command the powers of the universe, to hold eternity in his hand—he wanted this for
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himself. He wanted some day to become what Aril was: the Master of the Night Watch,
the true owner of worlds.
But to rise through the ranks to the Mastery, first he had to survive. He did not have to
avoid death, of course. A Master had died a hundred times or more by the time he reached
the pinnacle of dark godhood. But Rekkathav had to keep resurrecting, and the moments
between death and rebirth were when a dark god was most vulnerable. Aril knew of his
ambition, and though at the moment the Master of the Night Watch was amused by it—
that Rekkathav dared dream so high who had not yet tasted a single death, even his own—
Aril’s amusement had a nasty way of vanishing like smoke in the first stiff breeze.
Aril glided to the center of the Hub, with Rekkathav hurrying behind him.
Heads began popping up from behind the tall consoles that powered the Hub’s observation
and intervention gates. The head fieldmaster, Vanak, who was in charge of tracking
activity on the worlds in which the Night Watch worked, was on duty at the time. When
the Master beckoned, he came cringing up to Aril like a whipped cur. Rekkathav watched
the Master, ever silent, point a finger at Vanak.
It seemed nothing but a gesture. No lightning crackled; no thunder rolled. Yet the
fieldmaster’s spine arced and his fingers clenched into fists and his arms went rigid at his
sides, and for a moment he made a strangling noise in the back of his throat. He stared at
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