"David Zindell - Ea Cycle 04 - The Diamond Warriors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zindell David)

'What do you mean?'
'Some time this autumn,' Alphanderry said, 'there will be a great alignment of planets
and stars. Damoom and its star will perfectly conjunct the earth. Toward that day,
Angra Mainyu's malice will rain down upon Ea ever more foul and deadly. And on
that day, if Morjin should prevail and cripple Bemossed, or kill him, he will loose the
Dark One upon the universe, and ail will be destroyed.'
The sun blazed down upon us, and from somewhere in the woods, the tanager
continued trilling out its sweet song. We stood there in silence staring at
Alphanderry. And then Master Juwain asked him again, 'But how could you know
this?'
'I do not know... how I know,' Alphanderry said. 'As I stand here, as I speak, the
words come to my lips, like drops of dew upon the morning grass - and i do not
know what it will be that I must tell you. But my words are true.'
So it had been, I thought, in the Kul Moroth, when Alphanderry had recreated the
perfect and true words of the angels - and for a few glorious moments had sung
back an entire army bent on killing us all.
'And these words, above all others,' he said to us in his beauti-ful voice. 'Listen, I
know this must be, for it is the essence of all that we strive for; The Lightstone must
be placed in the Maitreya's hands. In the end, of course, there is no other way.'
He had said a simple thing, a true thing, and as with all such, it seemed obvious once
it had been spoken. My heart whispered that it must be I who delivered the golden
cup to the Maitreya. But how could I, I wondered, unless I first wrested it from
Morjin in that impossible battle I could not bear to contemplate?
I held my sword up to the sun, and I felt something within its length of bright silustria
align perfectly with other suns beyond Ea's deep blue sky. My fate, shaped like the
dark world of Damoom, seemed to come hurtling out of black space straight toward
me. In the autumn, I knew, it would find its way here and drive me down against the
hard earth. Despite all my hopes and dreams, I could no more avoid it than I could
the blood burning through my eyes or taking my next breath.
'Val - what is wrong?' Maram asked me. 'What do you see?'
I saw the forests of Mesh blackened by fire, and her mountains melted down into a
hellish, glowing slag. I saw Maram fallen dead upon a vast battlefield, and my other
companions, too. Atara lay holding her hands over her torn, bleeding belly, from
which our child had been taken and ripped into pieces. I saw myself: as cold as
stone upon the reddened grass, unmoving and waiting for the carrion birds. And
something else, the worst thing of all. As I stood there beneath the trees staring into
my sword's mirrored surface, I gasped at the dread cutting through my innards like
an ice-cold knife, and I wanted to scream out against the horror that I could not
bear.
And at that moment, in the air near the center of the clearing, a dark thing appeared.
Altaru, my great, black warhorse, whin-nied terribly and reared up to kick his hooves
at the air. I jumped back and swept my sword into a ready posture, for I feared that
Morjin had somehow sent a vulture or some kind of deadly crea-ture to devour me -
either that or I had fallen mad.
'Oh, my Lord!' Maram cried out, drawing out his sword, too. 'What is that?' Daj
asked, hurrying to my side. 'Hoy!' Alphanderry cried out in alarm. 'Hoy! Hoy!'
Once, Morjin had sent illusions to torment me, but the dark-ness facing me seemed
as real as a river's whirlpool. It hovered over the ferns and flowers like a spinning
blackness. My eyes had trouble holding onto it. It shifted about, and seemed to have
no definite size or shape, for at one moment it appeared as a smear of char and at