by James Wyatt
Roghar clasped his hand and clapped the Lord Warden on the shoulder. “Well said, my lord.”
Shara shifted her pack and stepped out of the inn. She looked down Market Street and saw the last straggling soldiers of Roghar’s little army disappear out of sight behind the temple of Erathis. Shaking her head, she set her back to Roghar and his army and made for the Knight’s Gate out of town, Quarhaun at her side.
At least half the garrison of the gate had abandoned their posts, probably running off to join Roghar. Nobody challenged them or gave them more than a glance as they passed through the gate. The road took them a quarter mile out of town and then hit the King’s Road, stretching off to the east and the west. Westward lay the Cloak Wood; Gardbury Downs and its ancient, ruined abbey; and eventually her home town of Winterhaven, nestled in the foothills of the Cairngorm Peaks. To the east was the lush vale of Harkenwold and then the forbidding Dawnforge Mountains, or they could take the Trade Road northeast through the Old Hills to Hammerfast. She stood at the crossroads for a long time, considering the road in both directions.
“Where are we going?” Quarhaun asked at last, rather stupidly, she thought.
She stared straight ahead, and her eyes rested on the gleam of the Nentir River under the morning sun.
“Forget the road,” she said. “We’re going north. Sooner or later, we’ll figure out where Vestapalk is hiding.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, there’s a whole world out there to explore. I’ve never been north, up to the Winterbole Forest, so we’re going there.”
In the meantime, she thought, we’re together.
Belen stumbled into the common room, looking wild-eyed and frantic, as if she’d just awoken from a nightmare. Roghar was reminded of the way Tempest had barged into the same room the night before, and half expected the soldier to proclaim that Nu Alin was in the room.
Instead, she forced her way through the crowds of revelers to the table where Roghar sat with Tempest, Uldane, and Albanon, celebrating their victory.
“Roghar,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”
Tempest stood and put an arm around Belen’s shoulder, then gently lowered her into the chair she’d vacated, at Roghar’s left hand.
“How are you feeling?” Roghar asked gently.
“Never mind that,” Belen said. “Listen. The thing-Nu Alin, when it was inside me.” She shuddered. “It tried to shield its thoughts from me, but I saw something. Something it didn’t want me to see.”
Roghar leaned forward on the table. “What did you see?”
“A … a memory, I suppose. Nu Alin stood before an enormous creature of green scales and red crystal, a hideous monster something like a dragon, but not any of the dragons I’ve ever seen in a book.”
“Vestapalk,” Albanon said.
“The dragon-thing was lying in a pool full of red liquid, almost like blood, but also like the red crystal on the demons we fought. The pool bubbled and churned, and at the edges where it met stone, it flashed with fire and lightning. The pool was at the bottom of an enormous shaft, and the shaft was full of the same sort of-of chaos, like the earth unformed and reduced to its component elements.”
“Has Vestapalk made his lair in another plane?” Tempest asked.
“No,” Belen said emphatically. “Nu Alin had a name for it-the Plaguedeep. But it’s in the world, Nu Alin knew this. It’s in a volcano to the west of here, past the Ogrefist Hills, not more than a hundred miles from Fallcrest.”
“Are you sure?” Roghar asked her, meeting her eyes.
“I’m positive.”
Roghar sat back in his chair and looked around the room, his thoughts a jumble.
“That’s not all, though,” Belen said, seizing his hand. “Roghar, we fought perhaps two dozen demons this morning. But in the demon’s memory, I saw hundreds of them. They gathered all around the pool, like it was some sort of spawning place for them.”
“Hundreds of demons,” Roghar said. “And so close.” He sighed and took a deep drink of his mead. “Tomorrow, Fallcrest begins its work of rebuilding. And we head west.”
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-7190ea-972e-3a4e-e081-0df7-8aee-046107
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 29.01.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.34, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 software
Document authors :
Wyatt, James
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/