"Will McDermott - Magic the Gathering - Odyssey Cycle 03 - Judgement" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDermott Will)

enchanted armor or sword. With a screech, Kamahl's sword drove down into the floor, giving the lieutenant
a third leg.
Kamahl released his sword, which stayed perfectly still holding up the frame of the dead lieutenant,
and stared at the two remaining soldiers, privates both.
"Leave. Now," he stated, simply. Glancing first at each other and then briefly at the barbarian and the
carnage behind him, the two privates turned and fled back down the corridor.
Kamahl turned back to the Order lieutenant, who now resembled a scarecrow more than a soldier.
Grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands, the barbarian heaved the sword out of the stone floor and
high up over his head once again, allowing the limp body to crumple to the floor beside his dead soldiers.
"You never told me your name. 1 guess I won't be able to add you to that list after all," muttered
Kamahl as he wiped the blood from his blade on the lieutenant's pants.
Kamahl sheathed his sword, no longer glowing with the power of the orb, slung the sheath over his
shoulders, and trotted down the hallway looking for an exit.
The pit was dark and silent. A single ray of light penetrated the gloom from the hole Kamahl had
blasted in the wall during the battle Chainer had started just an hour earlier. That contest was to decide the
fate of the Mirari but had instead sealed the fate of both Chainer and the Cabal. Picking his way through
the dead bodies and pools of blood, Kamahl glanced one last time at the box where Chainer had presided
over the pit for the first and last time.
"Goodbye my friend," said the barbarian.
The chaotic scene outside the pit was dramatically different from the deathly calm inside. Looters
smashed windows and grabbed goods. Gangs of thugs roamed the streets picking fights. Children stood by
ruined homes and tossed bricks, shards of glass, or broken chunks of mortar at Order patrols, dogs, and any
adult who came too close.
While technically a city of thieves and cutthroats, Cabal City had been, until an hour ago, an orderly
town governed by the power of greed-governed by the Cabal. But then Chainer had used the Mirari to try
to destroy the city, to wipe the Cabal clean so he could rebuild it in his own visage. The Cabal was no
longer here. Orderly greed had been replaced with wanton avarice.
Twice before, Kamahl had seen the power of the Mirari manifested with disastrous results. The first
time was in the Citadel, capital city of the Order, when Lieutenant Kirtar brought a final and irrevocable
order to the city, freezing all within the orb's extensive radius in the perfection of icy crystals. The second
use Kamahl had only seen from afar but had been able to piece enough information together to know that
the Emperor of the Mer Empire had set off the Mirari for some unknown reason, flooding much of northern
Otaria and destroying the Mer capital in the backwash.
Today, his friend Chainer had succumbed to the power of the Mirari and unleashed the demented
terrors inside his mind upon Cabal City. The blue sky had tuned a mustard color, and the landscape of the
city had been replaced with a kind of hell. Now, the sky was blue once more, the streets were again made
of stone, and the hellish creatures that had spewed forth from Chainer's mind were entombed inside
Chainer's crypt for all time.
But the Cabal was no more, and Cabal City was quickly destroying itself without the control that the
Cabal had given its citizens over their own demons.
"I swear I will not succumb to your seductive power," Kamahl muttered as much to himself as to the
Mirari. "Either I will control you, or I will bury you deep beneath Otaria if I have to. But I will not allow you
to destroy lives again."
Kamahl stood for a moment surveying the riots raging through the streets, watching the ebb and flow
of the chaos swirling around him, looking for an opening that would allow him to discretely leave the pit and
make his way out of the city. Unlike the natural chaos of fire, which obeyed certain rules he had learned
early in his life, human chaos offered too many variables to discern a meaningful pattern.
I could wait for nightfall and slip out amongst the deepening shadows, thought Kamahl, or I could just
try the direct approach. He strode out into the street, keeping a wary eye on the looters, gangs, and
unwanted urchins of Cabal City.