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

the next as a mass of frozen ink. I felt it fixing its malevolence on me. I took a step
closer to it and positioned my sword, and it floated closer and seemed to mirror my
movements as it positioned itself before me. A vast and terrible cold emanated from
it, and seized hold of my heart. It called to me in a dark voice that I could not bear to
hear.
'What is it?' Daj shouted again.
And Alphanderry, in a voice filled with awe, told him, 'It is the Ahrim.'

I did not have time to speculate on this strange name or wonder at the dark thing's
nature, for it suddenly shot through the air straight toward me. I whipped my sword
up to stop it. The gleam of my bright blade seemed to give it pause. Like a whirl of
smoke, it spun slowly about in the air three feet from my face. Somehow, I thought,
it watched and waited for me. I felt sick with hope-lessness and a mind-numbing
dread. Although it did not seem to bear for me any kind of human hate, I hated it, for
I sensed that the Ahrim was that soul-destroying emptiness which engendered pure
hate itself. 'Valashu Elahad,' it seemed to whisper to me.
I gripped my sword and shook my head. The dark thing had no form nor face nor
lips with which to move the air, and yet I heard its voice speaking to me along a
strange and sudden wind. And then, in a flash, it shifted yet again, and its secret
substance took on the lineaments of a face I knew too well: that of Salmelu Aradar.
It was an ugly face, nearly devoid of a chin or any redeeming feature. His great beak
of a nose pointed at me, as did his black and headike eyes. I hated the way he
looked at me, deep into my eyes, and so I brought up my sword to block his line of
sight. And his head, like a cobra's swayed to the right, and I repositioned my sword,
and then again to the left as he seemed to seek access in that direction to the dark
holes in my eyes. And so it went, our motions playing off each other, almost locked
together, faster and faster as it had been during our duel of swords in King Hadaru's
hall when Salmelu had nearly killed me, and I had nearly killed him.
'Valashu,' he whispered again, 'I wish you had seen your mother's eyes when we
crucified and ravished her in your father's hall.'
A dark fire leaped in my heart then, and I fought with all my will to keep it from
burning out of my arms and hands into my sword. But my restraint availed me
nothing. Salmelu roared out in triumph, and then he was Salmelu no more. The
blackness of his being metamorphosed yet again, this time into a thing of scales,
wings and a savagely swaying tail.
'The dragon!' Daj cried out from beside me. 'The dragon returns!'
I set my hand on Daj's shoulder, and shouted to Liljana, 'Take the children into the
trees!'
I could not spare a moment to watch liljana gather up Daj and Estrella and carry out
my command. The Ahrim, now shaped as a dragon, even as Daj had said hung in the
air before me with an almost delicate poise. It seemed to feed on the fire inside me,
and make it its own; in mere moments it grew into a raging, red beast fifty feet to
length. I recognized this terrible dragon as Angraboda, into whose belly I had once
plunged my sword in the deeps of Argattha. And now Angraboda regarded me with
her fierce, cold, vengeful eyes. Then her leather wings beat at the air in a thunder of
wind as the flew straight up toward the sun. She grew vaster and vaster and ever
darker, and her bloated body blocked out the sun's light and seemed to fill all the
sky. She opened her mighty jaws to spit down fire at me and burn me into
nothingness. And I felt the hateful fire building inside me, inciting me into a madness
to destroy her. ANGRABODA!