Читать книгу Element. Flame of Elisar онлайн

“What?!” Nargara jumped up, all pale and her eyes full of horror.

I fell silent as her reaction frightened me. Why was she so scared?

Nargara always was very balanced, and I had never seen any trace of fear on her face. But back then she was scared, and I could tell she was scared a lot. A cold shiver ran down my back. Elcha was silent too, and terrified.

“Tell me more! And what sort of tentacles?” she asked getting her composure back.

“Well, it was all black, with a horse-like muzzle, large, and the skin was very peculiar, as if decorated with some pattern. And the tentacles moving on the back of the neck. Looked like they were trying the air around.”

And even though Mammy tried to keep her face calm, I could see her hands were trembling.

“Was it alone?” she asked in a dry voice.

“Yeah. Do you know what species it was?” I dared to ask.

“That was not an animal” she was definitely hiding something as she took her empty gaze away. “And, Ricka, you can’t even imagine how lucky you were.”

She sat back on the bed and I could feel some kind of tension in her movements. Or she was just tired. As I did not understand it, I went on scrutinizing her face and waiting for

explanation, but next moment she changed the subject.

“We spent about a day looking for you. The Sun had set and you were not to be seen. First I sent a message to Gorhar, and the answer came that you left the Fortress long before. Then I took Elcha, Truvle, Yoos and a couple other men asking them to help me comb through the way from the Fortress to Karun. And it had not been before the next morning, at break of light, that Truvle noticed some footprints. We followed them and came out to the cliff, and the place was all in blood…” she paused, apparently appalled at the picture that her verbal recollection brought back to her mind, and then continued, “Yoos said that the prints led to the waterfall, and then disappeared, so we decided to move along the river. And after a while Truvle found you… When he brought you in his arms, my heart stopped…” she fell silent again and brushed a tear from her cheek, which left a wet path on it. Elcha was sobbing, too. And I got some ugly tension turning into a feeling of emptiness, which began to spread through my body. Even the thought of what they had to experience there, at the river, and that I could see them never again, made my heart shrink in pain.