The Serpentwar Saga: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ Loungville was silent. Erik found himself growing uncomfortable with the duration and at last said, ‘Sergeant?’

      ‘Shut up,’ came the quick response. ‘I’m thinking.’

      Erik and the others stayed silent. Then at last de Loungville’s voice cut through the darkness. ‘Greylock!’ he called, his voice low but urgent.

      From the rear a figure moved slowly forward, trying not to step on feet in the dark. At last a voice said, nearby, ‘Yes?’

      ‘You’re in charge. I expect you to get as many of this company out alive as you can.’

      The former officer said, ‘I will, Sergeant. I’d like Erik for my second.’

      De Loungville didn’t hesitate. ‘Von Darkmoor, you act as sergeant for a while. Jadow, you’re his corporal. All of you pay attention to whatever Nakor and Hatonis have to say.

      ‘This is what you’re going to do. I’m waiting here for Calis. I don’t want to try to mark the passages we take in case more of those Pantathians come this way. Leave me one torch and I’ll wait here until I decide the Captain’s not coming back.’ There was a note of urgency and worry in his voice Erik had never heard before. He wondered if he would have noticed it had he been able to see de Loungville’s face.

      ‘Then I’ll catch up with you,’ continued de Loungville.

      ‘Now, here’s what you do. When you reach the surface, get across the grasslands as best you can, and to the coast. Acquire horses or steal a boat, but somehow get back to the City of the Serpent River. Trenchard’s Revenge is there or she’s been sunk, for Nicholas gave orders that at least one ship would remain for us. Hatonis and his men will know the best route.’

      Hatonis, from the rear, spoke loudly enough for his voice to carry just to the front of the line. ‘There’s an old trade route, overland from Ispar to the City of the Serpent River, through Maharta. It is rarely used anymore, but it should be passable on horseback.’

      De Loungville took a deep breath and said, ‘All right, light a torch and get out of here.’

      The man who had been harboring the torches lit a spark and soon the flame was going. Erik found he had to squint, which surprised him, given how far back down the line the light was. He turned and saw de Loungville; the sergeant had his usual mask of determination in place. Erik decided he wouldn’t have noticed the sound of worry if he had been looking at the man.

      Without saying anything, Erik reached out and quickly placed his hand on de Loungville’s arm, gave a quick squeeze, and released it, the only gesture he could make without saying something.

      The sergeant looked at him, giving him only a brief nod of acknowledgment, before Erik moved down the tunnel. Greylock reached the junction of the tunnels, peered both ways, then motioned for the men to follow to the left. Erik reached the junction and as he started to turn the corner, he fought down the urge to look back to where de Loungville waited.

      If only the Captain were here, he said to himself silently. Where could Calis be?

      Calis held close to the wall as he stared in wide-eyed amazement. He and his father had spoken many times of what it would be like to confront their unusual heritage, a legacy of ancient magic, warped by the skill of Macros the Black, and used to bring to his human father the powers incarnate of the legendary Valheru.

      Tomas had wooed and won the hand of Aglaranna, the Queen of the Elves, and had fathered Calis, impossible fruit of a union unique in history. Calis was young by the reckoning of the elven people, little more than a half century old. By human consideration, he was a man of middle years, and by any measure, he had more than a dozen lifetimes’ experience in watching the pain and madness of the creatures who lived on this world.

      But nothing had prepared him to deal with the consequences of what he had chosen to investigate.

      Elves possessed the ability to navigate by the dimmest light of the night, a single moon, or distant stars, but even dwarves were incapable of seeing in the utter blackness of underground tunnels. Yet they had other senses, and Calis, unlike his elven cousins, had traveled with dwarves enough in his youth to have learned some of their tricks: the sound of air moving, faint echoes upon the passage walls, counting turns and remembering distances. It was said that once upon a path, no dwarf could ever fail to retrace his steps. Calis possessed the same knack.

      After leaving the company, he had moved back down to the vast gallery, the circular central hall of this city within a mountain. For that was what he was certain it had been, once in ancient days, a city beneath the mountains, as Roo had supposed. But the youth from Ravensburg had no idea what sort of city.

      From what he had studied with Tathar and the other Spellweavers of Elvandar, Calis had suspected from the first that this was a city of elven construction rather than dwarven. But the elves who had built this place were as unlike Calis’s people as they were unlike any other mortal race. Those elves had existed as slaves to the Valheru, and only by command of their ancient masters could such a place have come to be built by elven hands.

      Once he had reached the gallery, Calis was convinced the sound he had heard had been nothing more than a distant rockfall. There were no signs of pursuit; still, he moved downward to make sure, passing the strange split in the tunnels that had called to him so strangely.

      He had moved deep within the well of darkness, and when at last he could hear only his own breath and the pounding of his heart in his ear, he turned back. But as he approached that odd junction where he had hesitated the first time he had passed, at the head of the company, he again paused, sensing something ancient and compelling deep within the tunnel that moved downward.

      It was a foolish risk, yet it was impossible for Calis to resist. He knew he should ensure the others got free, but he had faith in the cunning of de Loungville and the skills of Nakor.

      And now he knew what had called him. There was something ancient at the heart of this hall. And he looked upon it with fear and astonishment.

      He had taken the tunnel moving downward, following it through another gallery, smaller than the grand gallery they had climbed, yet large enough to have served as a small town. High above, a faint light shone down, so far away that the noon sun was but a pinpoint, yet that entrance, at the summit of some high mountain, told him his instinct was correct.

      This ancient place had once been home to a Valheru, much as the great cavern below the Mac Mordain Cadal, the ancient dwarven mines in the Grey Tower Mountains, had been home to Ashen-Shugar, the Ruler of the Eagles’ Reaches, the Valheru whose ancient spirit had come to possess his father and change his nature so profoundly.

      Crossing a narrow stone bridge, he had come to a set of wooden doors large enough to admit a great dragon, and Calis knew that once they did, for the Dragon Lords kept their mighty mounts close at hand. In the door was a smaller portal, one used by servants in ages past.

      He had moved a heavy iron handle, and to his surprise it opened a latch easily and without noise. The door had swung open on hinges recently well oiled, and Calis blinked his eyes as the sudden light threatened to blind him.

      At the end of the long cavernous hall, a ledge overlooked a vast cavern ablaze with torchlight; and in the center of the cavern a village of mud huts, crude and without craft in their fashioning, was constructed around a series of cracks. Steam rose, heralding an underground source of heat, and at the center of the largest vent a heat shimmer danced in the СКАЧАТЬ