Odnośniki
- Indeks
- C.S. IGRZYSKA ĹMIERCI 01 IGRZYSKA ĹMIERCI
- Jeff Erno Dumb Jock 01 Dumb Jock
- Beaton M.C. Hamish Macbeth 01 Hamish Macbethi ĹmierÄ plotkary
- Miller Henry Zwrotnik Raka 01 Zwrotnik Raka
- Frederick Marshall Brown [Ravaging Myths 01] Ravaging Myths (pdf)(1)
- Alan Dean Foster Alien 01 Alien
- Lyn Hamilton [Archeological Mystery 01] The Xibalba Murders (v1.0) [lit]
- 34. Roberts Nora SpeĹniÄ marzenia 01 PieĹĹ gĂłr
- Annee Pfau [The Blood Curse 01] Redemption (pdf)
- M L N Hanover Black Sun's Daughter 01 Unclean Spirits
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- effulla.pev.pl
twenty years.
Tarran touched the broken skull, very gently, as if he were touching
living flesh. Here was his brother, and the stain on the floor was the
shadow of their blood.
"It was a hard way to kill them, " Tarran said. He got to his feet, and
he came to stand by me. "It was a cruel, hard way to do it. "
He wasn't looking at the blood mark as he spoke, or at me. He was
checking the release of every one of those knives of his, making sure
each would come swiftly from its sheath when needed. He kept the jewel-
hilted long knife to hand.
"Are you ready, Ryle?"
Dry-mouthed, I said that I was.
"Put the torch out. "
I hesitated, wanting to cling to all the light I could.
"Do it. "
I did, and when my vision settled, there was more light to see by than
I'd reckoned could be so. The great opening in the ceiling channeled
the starlight and moonlight downward in a slanting, milky column. And
now, with the light evenly spread, I saw more than blood and the
browned skulls of Tarran's luckless kinsmen. Now I saw the dragon's
hoard rising like a mountain of moonlit rainbows under the ground.
"It's a fine hoard, " Tarran said, his voice low. "Raw gems from the
mountains of Karthay, golden torques from Istar, rings from
Palanthas... chalices and plate from the towers of wizards, from the
halls of knights, from the tables of the elf lords in Silvanost. There,
" he said, pointing to a sword. The blade was rust-pitted, age-dulled;
the grip was a ruby, one solid stone shaped for a slender hand. "That
belonged to an elven queen, and it's said that she forged it herself,
so long ago that these days her people hardly remember her name. All
this Claw has stolen to hide the single thing he holds dearest. "
Whispering, like a worshiper, I said, "What could the beast hold dearer
than this hoard?"
"I saw it, " he said, answering me only glancingly. Now he sounded like
a dreaming man. "When I was lying for bait, I saw what the beast
guarded, what he always tried to hide with every turn, every spread of
his wings. "
We went wide around the bloodstain, wide around the skulls. Tarran was
white in the moonlight, like a ghost walking. We went past piles of
uncut topaz, and that was like walking past frozen fire. In the shadow
of the mound, behind the hoard, we found another skull. It was a
dragon's, and it paled every treasure Claw had in his hoard.
Long as me, and half as long again, this skull was-like the others-
browned with age. Its fangs were gilded, its eye sockets dressed in
silver and filled each with a ruby the size of my two fists together.
Seven bony spines, the start of a crest that must have run down the
length of the dragon's back, wore sheaths of silver and were hung with
nets of slender gold strands from which diamonds and blue, blue
sapphires dangled.
I touched one of those nets, and the jewels chimed gently against each
other, a delicate tinkling.
"Tarran, what is this?"
He sighed, a whispered groan. "What the miser hoards to hide. Who would
look past that mountain of trinkets to see this, aye?"
This skull, dressed in gold and silver and gems, was Claw's treasure.
Tarran had seen that. When his kinsmen were dying, one by one murdered,
Tarran had seen the shape of his revenge behind the shining mass of
stolen treasure.
Now he moved a little, as if to reach to touch the skull. But he didn't
reach, and he didn't touch. He let his hand fall, barely raised.
"This is why Claw built the steps in his lair, " he said. "A gemsmith,
or more than one, had to come in to do this work. It's dwarf-craft.
Claw made a bargain with someone out of Thorbardin, a long time ago. "
He lifted his long knife, eyeing it as though he'd never seen it before
now. He turned it this way and that, the jeweled hilt and blued steel
glittering in the moons' light. Then, suddenly, he reversed his grip
and made a shining hammer of the hilt. Groaning, aching right to his
soul, he struck the dragon skull. Under this first of revenge's blows,
a silver-sheathed spine fell from the bony crest and shattered at my
feet. A golden net of sapphires rattled, slithered, and clattered to
the floor. I reached for it, and Tarran turned on me, his eyes like
dark fire.
"Not till I've powdered this damn skull!"
He broke another spine from the crest, and he shouted a curse, the cry
a longed-for release from old, old pain. He pried a rubied eye from one
of the sockets, and his cursing now sounded like the cries of a blood-
lusty soldier sacking a foeman's hall.
This wasn't my vengeance; it wasn't for me to do this breaking. I
stepped away, out into the moonlight, tight and tense and doing the job
I was hired for-warding the vengeance-taking. Eyes on the great opening
above, I walked past the hill of treasure, out into the middle of the
lair. I stepped wide around the skulls of Tarran's kinsmen, wide around
the old blood mark on the stony floor.
Tarran kicked a tooth from the dragon's skull. Now his cursing sounded
like sobbing. I didn't turn to look at him. Revenge is a private thing,
and if a man wants to sob over it, he should be able to do it in
privacy.
I walked round the lair, pacing, watching the sky-and, not watching the
floor, I tripped on something. I flinched back, thinking it was an
ancient bony relic of some unfortunate death, and saw that it wasn't.
In the shadows, I couldn't tell more than that, and I toed it out into
the center of the lair, into the light of the two moons. It was a shard
of an old, leathery eggshell. Once a she-dragon had lived in this lair.
With a sudden chill, I turned to see Tarran kicking another tooth from
the skull that a gemsmith out of Thorbardin had dressed like a queen in
jewels and gold.
The wind outside moaned like grief. The sound shivered down my spine.
Tarran never seemed to notice. He kicked another tooth out of the
dragon skull, and the wind's moaning rose in pitch. The hair on the
back of my neck and arms bristled.
"Tarran!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]