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.We should have left the evil place.’ Berem repeated this to himself several times, like a chant.Then he fell silent.No one moved or spoke and, after a moment, he began speaking so softly the others were forced to lean close to hear.And they realized, slowly, that he had forgotten they were there or even where he was.He had gone back to that time.‘But there is one beautiful, beautiful object in the ruins: the base of a broken column, encrusted with jewels!’—Berem’s voice was soft with awe—’I have never seen such beauty! Or such wealth! How can I leave it? Just one jewel! Just one will make us rich! We can move to the city! My sister will have suitors, as she deserves.I—I fall to my knees and I take out my knife.There is one jewel—a green gemstone—that glitters brightly in the sunlight! It is lovely beyond anything I have ever seen! I will take it.Thrusting the knife blade’—here Berem made a swift motion with his hand—’into the stone beneath the jewel, I begin to pry it out.‘My sister is horrified.She cries to me—she commands me to stop.‘This place is holy,’ she pleads.‘The jewels belong to some god.This is sacrilege, Berem!’Berem shook his head, his face dark with remembered anger.‘I ignore her, though I feel a chill in my heart even as I pry at the jewel.But I tell her—’If it belonged to the gods, they have abandoned it, as they have abandoned us!’ But she won’t listen.’Berem’s eyes flared open, they were cold and frightening to see.His voice came from far away.‘She grabs me! Her fingernails dig into my arm! It hurts!‘ ‘Stop, Berem!’ she commands me-me, her older brother! I will not let you desecrate what belongs to the gods!’‘How dare she talk to me like that? I’m doing this for her! For our family! She should not cross me! She knows what can happen when I get mad.Something breaks in my head, flooding my brain.I can’t think or see.I yell at her—’Leave me be!’—but her hand grabs my knife hand, jarring the blade, scratching the jewel.Berem’s eyes flashed with a crazed light.Surreptitiously Caramon laid his hand on his dagger as the man’s hands clenched to fists and his voice rose to an almost hysterical pitch.‘I—I shove her.not that hard.I never meant to shove her that hard! She’s falling! I’ve got to catch her, but I can’t.I’m moving too slowly, too slowly.Her head.hits the column.A sharp rock pierces her here’—Berem touched his temple— ‘blood covers her face, spills over the jewels.They don’t shine anymore.Her eyes don’t shine either.They stare at me, but they don’t see me.And then.and then.’His body shuddered convulsively.‘It is a horrible sight, one I see in my sleep every time I close my eyes! It is like the Cataclysm, only during that, all was destroyed! This is a creation, but what a ghastly, unholy creation! The ground splits open! Huge columns begin to reform before my eyes.A temple springs up from a hideous darkness below the ground.But it isn’t a beautiful temple—it is horrible and deformed.I see Darkness rise up before me, Darkness with five heads, all of them twisting and writhing in my sight.The heads speak to me in a voice colder than a tomb.‘Long ago was I banished from this world, and only through a piece of the world may I enter again.The jeweled column was—for me—a locked door, keeping me prisoner.You have freed me, mortal, and therefore I give you what you seek—the green gemstone is yours!’‘There is terrible, mocking laughter.I feel a great pain in my chest.Looking down, I see the green gemstone embedded in my flesh, even as you see it now.Terrified by the hideous evil before me, stunned by my wicked act, I can do nothing but stare as the dark, shadowy shape begins to grow clearer and clearer.It is a dragon! I can see it now—a five-headed dragon such as I had heard nightmarish tales about when I was a child!‘And I know then that once the dragon enters the world, we are doomed.For at last I understand what I have done.This is the Queen of Darkness the clerics teach us about.Banished long ago by the great Huma, she has long sought to return.Now—by my folly—she will be able again to walk the land [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]