Читать «THE SEA DEVIL S EYE (зксм-3)» онлайн - страница 46

"Nothing." Pacys paused his song. "All whom I have talked to have told me only that he was born long ago, when Toril was young. They didn't know if he was human or elf in the beginning, or what he would look like now."

Myrym nodded. "Someone once knew, but they have forgotten. However, that which others forget, the locathah hold close and treasure that it may someday benefit us. The other races have prophecies, parts they are to play in the coming battle."

Pacys changed tunes, finding one that played more slowly and conveyed menace. He recognized it as one of the Taker's alternate scores.

"Those thousands of years ago," Myrym said, "there existed a being unlike any that ever lived before. Some have said he was even the first man, the first to crawl from the sea and live upon the unforgiving dry. What made him crawl from the blessed sea, no one may know, but some say there was a longing within him to find another such as himself. The sea in those days was very green and had only recently given up space to the lands that rose from the fertile ocean bottom at the gods' behest."

Pacys listened intently, striking chords that would help his song paint the pictures of the tale.

"The Taker wandered the lands," Myrym said, "but of course, he found nothing there. The dry world was too new, and even the world of the sea was very young. While he was on the land, he talked with the gods. They were curious about him, you see, at this weak thing that dared talk to them and question the things that they did."

From the corner of his eye, Pacys saw that the locathah woman held the full attention of her tribe. The cadence of her voice pulled them in.

"With nothing to find on land, the Taker returned to the sea. It has been said that the Taker was there the day Sekolah set the first sahuagin free."

"Did he have a name?" Pacys asked.

"If he did, it has been forgotten," Myrym answered. "In those days, before people came to the sea, before some of them left the oceans and made their homes on dry land only later to return to the sea, names were not necessary. There was only one."

"Is he a man?" the old bard asked. "A wizard?"

"Not a true man, but again, not a creature of the sea either. He was himself, a thing unique."

"How did he come to be?"

"No one knows for sure, Loremaster. There are those who say his birth was an accident, created by the forces that first made Toril. Others say the god Bane crafted him to torture others. All agree that the Taker searched for love, for acceptance, for an end to the loneliness that filled him at being the one."

"But we all crave those things," Pacys said, not understanding. "How could this monster look for that which we all seek? I've been told the Taker is evil incarnate."

"He is," Myrym replied. "Are the wants and needs of good and evil so very different?"

"No," Pacys said. "Our stories are filled with those who fell from grace. Heroes and villains, only the merest whisper sometimes separates them."

"The Taker simply was," Myrym said. "His loneliness persisted till he drew the eye of Umberlee. The Bitch Queen in those days was softer. The gods had not yet begun to war over territories and the supplication of the thinking races that spread throughout the lands and seas of Toril. They existed in peace, each learning about their own powers, learning to dream their own dreams. Umberlee found the Taker, and she grew fascinated by him."