"Christopher Rowley - Bazil 02 - A Sword For A Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowley Christopher)

With harsh phrases of power, the thing summoned a Black Mirror out
of nothingness. It hung there in the air, a gleaming circle in which the
grey shining backwash of chaos surged. At the Mesomaster’s command,
the mirror floated downward and arranged itself at knee height. The girl
lay down, her eyes, mercifully, were quite blank. The dead child held a
razor in its hand.

The bishop thought back to his disastrous experiment. What a fool he
had been! Once again he wondered if he had been guided to the black arts,
whether the enemy had known of some weakness in him that could be
worked on to finally trap him.

The dead child slit the girl’s throat, and tilted her head to spread her
blood across the non-surface of the Black Mirror. It smoked and stank,
and while it smoked the Mesomaster recited a terrible chant.

Something coalesced in the darkness within the Black Mirror.
Surrounded in a halo of fractionalized sparks, the thing grew larger.
Twisting motions writhed in the clouds of chaos.

The Mesomaster stepped back. From the mirror there came a gush of a
thick green vapor that spilled out and rolled across the floor of the pit like
a liquid, slowly filling it to knee height.

Light blazed suddenly from a point within the vapor. Something began
to rise out of the vapor and take solid form. It was a dark green at first,
but slowly it became golden and the surface took on a pattern of scales.

At length a great golden serpent coiled upon the floor and looked down
upon them with huge expressionless eyes like portholes into nothingness.

The god Sephis was reborn, a malacostracan demon from another,
darker world.


CHAPTER ONE

Dragoneer First Class Relkin of Quosh could think of many better ways
of spending a precious four-week leave, but he had made a promise to his
dragon. And so he found himself in a chill spring downpour, standing
under a twisted pine tree on the slopes of Mt. Ulmo, staring out over an
alpine meadow that was cloaked in cold fog.

It had rained for days. Relkin was damp, even under his Kenor freecoat
with its thick waxed outer surface, which was proof against any single
rain. He sighed audibly.

A tall, dark mass was visible in the meadow, a dragon, also in rain gear,
with a waterproof mantle pulled around his neck keeping off the worst of
the downpour.