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

"Your mages have also finished their research on the portals that have sealed us in the chasm,"
continued the crab. "They report that it is impossible to destroy the portals from inside the chasm, and that
even if we had some way to escape, they would not have enough power to destroy the portal generators,
even from the outside."
Laquatas flipped his tail violently, spinning around to face the chittering crab. "How am I to destroy an
empire when 1 can barely get a frog out of this prison alive, let alone unleash my army on Mer City?"
bellowed the mer as the silver-tipped horns on his head began to glow.
Simone tried to scuttle out the door, hut before she even got a claw on the latch, the water around her
began to seethe and roil as the liquid's temperature rose sharply. The water around Simone reached a boil,
and bubbles appeared all over her reddening shell. They floated up to the ceiling where they created a
growing pocket of air. Simone turned to face the ambassador, her face contorted by the pain of being boiled
alive. Before she could speak again, her heart burst from the heat, and her claws sagged.
Laquatas continued to boil the crab for several minutes, watching her body tumble in the heated water.
Some of the heat made its way to the back of the room where the ambassador floated, but he had enjoyed
saunas during his decadent days amongst the land walkers in Cabal City and knew his limits. He ended the
spell long before he was in any danger.
The report finished and his anger soothed for the moment, the ambassador decided to return to his
maps once again to look for some means of escape. As he turned, Laquatas noticed the torn map still on
the floor near Burke, and his horns flashed again as the anger welled up at the incompetence surrounding
him.
The lanky mer quelled his temper quickly, though, for he knew of no way to actually punish a creature
that had no bones he could break or organs he could boil. So he simply picked up the map, intending to put it
back himself. But as the ambassador turned toward the wall, he noticed that where there should have been
a bare space, there was, in fact, a map.
"What is this?" asked Laquatas as he swam over to the wall. The map Burke had retrieved showed
little more than a large, blackened-in representation of the chasm.
"Veza's map," sneered the ambassador. "Her little joke come back to haunt me again."
The black map had materialized within the barrier only a few days after his defeat, along with a
message from the empress's pet mer, Veza. Laquatas had tried to turn her against Llawan, but in the end,
the mer bitch had turned on Laquatas. This was her final barb: a blackened-in survey map of the trench
with the words "Loqar's Folly" scrawled across the top. Laquatas had crumpled the map and tossed it into
the comer of the room, vowing vengeance against Veza and her cephalid ruler.
Laquatas looked back at where Simone floated by the door. "You see this he said to Simone. "She is
the one I should boil. She and her precious empress. The gall of that mermaid to help trap me here and then
send me a featureless map as a present."
Laquatas ripped the map off the wall and floated over to show it to the dead crab.
"A picture of my prison, you see?" he said. "I squirm in this black hole like a tuna enveloped in squid's
ink while they sit out there, in my throne room, and laugh at me."
Laquatas stared at the map as the anger welled up inside him again. Completely featureless, just like
the huge prison cell he had been tricked into, the map was useless except to fuel his anger.
"Not like these other maps, no!" ranted the mer as he turned to survey the room. "These show me
everything and nothing at the same time. They show me a prison that I can leave anytime I wish, for I have
the power to escape by myself, just not the power to destroy the walls and unleash my army."
Turning back to Simone, Laquatas tossed the map onto the crab's still-hot shell.
"And what is a ruler without his army?" he asked jetting around the room and preaching to the walls.
"I'll tell you-a dead ruler. So here I stay, a prisoner of my own making in a cold, black cell."
As the map lay on Simone's heated shell, an inky cloud began to rise, turning the water above the crab
black. Irritated that the blasted map would not go away, Laquatas swam back over to rip it to shreds and be
done with it once and for all. But as he swished his hand through the cloud to clear the water, Laquatas
noticed that the black ink covering the map was liquefying from the heat and lifting off the velum, showing