The Complete Darkwar Trilogy. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ with a shrug. ‘How long is anyone’s guess.’

      ‘Centuries,’ said Miranda.

      ‘If we’re lucky,’ said Nakor. ‘It could be longer. Certainly it’s unlikely that any of us will live long enough to see it – and we’re all going to live a lot longer than most!’ he added with a grin.

      Magnus sighed loudly. ‘You speak of centuries into the future, longer perhaps; what has this to do with our current situation?’

      Nakor put both palms out and gave a dramatic shrug. ‘I have no idea.’ He looked at Pug. ‘Do you?’

      Pug nodded. ‘A little. One of our problems is that the Nameless One still impacts on our world, even if it is over a vast distance and only indirectly. The Good Goddess may have left her echoes and memories, but she has no direct impact on this world, even on the level that her opponent does. So, in a way, we are her agents, attempting to counteract those who are being influenced by the Nameless One.

      ‘I doubt that our old nemesis, Leso Varen, has even the most remote idea when he became a thing of evil. Perhaps it was something that he chose – striking a deal for power in exchange for service.’

      ‘He may not even realise who he serves,’ suggested Nakor. ‘Remember that situation with the Tear of the Gods?’

      Pug’s expression darkened. ‘I had a long and heated discussion with Arutha about not letting me know about that until after the matter was decided.’

      Nakor nodded. He knew the story, but hadn’t been directly involved. And he also knew it was a painful subject because William, Pug’s eldest child, and Jezhara, one of his better students, had been at the centre of the confrontation.

      They, along with the man who would later become Duke James of Krondor, had managed to thwart Varen and his agents in their attempt to steal the Tear of the Gods – the artefact that allowed the temples to communicate with their deity.

      Nakor continued. ‘We will never fully know some aspects of that story. From what we do know, the man called The Bear was acting on his own. He had ceased taking instructions from Varen, and that’s one hallmark of those serving the Nameless One; they are often mad and go off at … whim and wreak havoc even among their own allies.

      ‘That’s one of our few advantages; the Conclave are united and even those who view us with some suspicion – such as the temples or the magicians at Stardock – don’t interfere with what we’re doing.’

      ‘They don’t know what we are doing,’ offered Magnus.

      Pug laughed indulgently. ‘Do not underestimate them, son, nor attach too great an importance to ourselves. The temples and monarchs have a very good idea what we are about, else they might be less cooperative than they have been.’

      Nakor laughed as well. ‘When the day comes that we must confront the agents of the Nameless One, we may have great need of these people you disdain.’

      Magnus had the good grace to look crestfallen.

      Nakor continued. ‘What troubles me is that these manifestations of godpower, these dreams and echoes and memories, are now appearing with more frequency. At least a dozen strange incidents that our agents have reported since the Serpentwar lead me to believe this is so.’

      ‘What do you think it means?’ asked Miranda.

      ‘That something is coming. Something that is tied to the slumbering enemy.’

      Pug looked at Nakor. ‘The Dasati?’

      ‘It was the Nameless One who influenced the Pantathians to bring the Saaur through the rift to our world. We know it was a ruse to loose demons here.

      ‘Destruction and chaos are the Nameless One’s allies. He has no cares for the short-term effects on this world, so long as horrors and evil are visited on people and his powers rise. I can only guess,’ said Nakor, ‘but I think he dreams of supremacy, else why try to establish Zaltais on a throne, instead of the Emerald Queen? He needed his surrogate, his dream being, in control, so he could hasten his return to this reality. He seeks to put himself above the other Controller Gods before they can return the balance.’

      ‘Madness,’ said Magnus.

      ‘By it’s nature, evil is madness,’ replied Nakor. ‘Hence the Days of the Mad Gods’ Rage.’

      ‘The Chaos Wars,’ said Pug.

      Magnus said, ‘So we must struggle and die and our children are to struggle and die after us?’

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Nakor. ‘We may never know a moment of transcendent triumph, a time when we can say, “the day is ours!” and know the struggle has passed forever.

      ‘Think of us as ants, if you will. We must topple a mighty citadel, a monstrous thing of stone and mortar, and we have only our naked bodies to spend in the effort.

      ‘So we labour for years, centuries, millennia, even epochs; scraping away at stone with our tiny jaws. Thousands, tens of thousands, millions of us die, and slowly the stones begin to crumble.

      ‘But, if we have a design, and possess knowledge, we can choose where to bite. We will not trouble all the stones, merely the keystone upon which all the others rest. And then we may wear away at the mortar around that stone, so that at last, the stone can be pushed aside, and once that is accomplished the massive stones above begin to move, and over time, fall.

      ‘No, we may never see an end to this struggle, but in time the Good Goddess and the Nameless One may return, and the balance would be restored.’

      ‘What sort of world would that be?’ wondered Magnus.

      ‘One with less strife, I hope,’ said Miranda.

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Nakor. ‘But even if it is not, the strife will be far more prosaic. What we do now is contest with worlds hanging in the balance.’

      Magnus looked down at his younger brother. ‘And the price of defeat is too grim to contemplate.’

      Pug looked at his two sons and his wife, then said, ‘As well I know.’

      No one needed to say more, they all knew that Pug’s first two children had died during the Serpentwar and that the loss was still bitter to him.

      Nakor stood and said, ‘We should go. I’ll send messages to our agents in the region to see if the attack on Caleb was part of a greater design or merely an unhappy accident.’

      ‘Wait a moment, Nakor,’ asked Pug, as Miranda and Magnus left. ‘McGrudder was right we should move him?’

      ‘No,’ said Pug. ‘I think we leave him in place. If these are bandits alone, then no harm has been done. If those who attacked Caleb are Varen’s agents, let them believe they gulled us into thinking the attack was by mere bandits. If McGrudder comes under scrutiny, it should not be hard to discern in so small a place; we can always dispatch a watcher to watch the watchers.’

      Nakor nodded with a grin. This was the sort of underhanded plotting that appealed to him.

      ‘There is another matter,’ said Pug.

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