"Holly Lisle - World Gates 03 - Gods Old and Dark" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

the Master, his mouth opening and closing as if he were a fish torn from the water and
tossed into the tall grass to die.

Then Vanak’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor, twitching. He pissed
himself, flopped and spasmed, vomited, lost control of his bowels. Watching this display,
Rekkathav felt terror digging inside his gut as if it were full of fighting reptiles, cold and
clawed and sharp of tooth and spine.

Fieldmasters’ live log, Aril whispered in Rekkathav’s skull, and Rekkathav leapt as if
stabbed and raced for the log, skittering back to place it with trembling fingers in the
Master’s outstretched hand.

Aril did not look at the log, though. He simply stood, waiting, sniffing the air as if he
smelled the fear that rose in the room like heat off of stones after a blazing summer day.



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Nine gates in the staff gatewall at the far rim of the Hub shimmered to life, and nine
fieldmasters—dark gods of the Night Watch all, with positions of tremendous power and
privilege—stepped through almost simultaneously. Their eyes first found Aril, and then
Vanak at his feet, still flopping, no shred of awareness or dignity left to him.

The fieldmasters had endured thousands of their own deaths among them. Any aspects of
their living selves had long ago been stripped away, leaving them creatures of keen
intelligence, ravenous dark appetites, and little else. But they were still capable of fear.
Not an emotion, fear—it was a simple survival instinct. Creatures with no capacity for fear
could not recognize danger to their existence and avoid it; most creatures so made didn’t
last long in a universe well endowed with teeth. The dark gods of the Night Watch were
survivors. They stared at the grotesque remains of their still-living but destroyed
colleague, and they recoiled.

Come, Aril told them in a thought-voice that everyone within the Hub could hear, and the
fieldmasters stepped toward him, their horror clear in every reluctant step.

In the whole of the Hub, the only sound Rekkathav heard was ragged breathing.

When the fieldmasters stood before him, Aril held the log-book out. Find an example of
your signature, one at a time, and show it to me. This, too, he broadcast into the minds of
everyone present.

He handed the log to the first fieldmaster to his left, and Rekkathav watched the
fieldmaster flip to a page, point to his initials, and pass the book to the next. The log went
down the line, each fieldmaster finding an example of his or her initials and pointing it
out, and the last fieldmaster demonstrating the presence of his own signature and returning
the log to Aril.