Читаем Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1 полностью

Shota nodded. "That's all I am able to tell you about the blood beast and what such a thing holds for you. If it continues to exist, sooner or later it will likely get you. But, because it's not predictable, even that outcome is not able to be predicted. When, where, or how soon it will get you is impossible to know. It may be today, or, for all I know, it may be that before it is able to find you and kill you, you will first die of old age."

"Well, there is that possibility, then," Richard muttered.

"Not much to lay your hopes on," she said in a sympathetic tone. "As long as you live, Richard, as long as blood pumps in your veins, the blood beast will hunt you."

"Are you suggesting that it finds me by my blood? The way a heart hound is said to be able to find a person by the sound of their beating heart?"

Shota lifted a hand as if to forestall the notion. "Only in a manner of speaking. It has tasted your blood, in a sense. But your blood, as you are thinking of it, is not what it is meaningful to this beast. What is material is what it sensed from that taste: your ancestry.

"It already knew that you live. It was already hunting you. Your use of your gift the first time was enough to bind it to you for all eternity. It is the gift carried in your blood that it sensed and that caused it to change."

Richard had so many questions he didn't know what to ask first. He started with what he thought might be the easiest to understand. "Why is it linked to the underworld? Is there a purpose for that?"

"A couple that I'm aware of. The underworld is eternal. Time has no meaning in eternity. Therefore, time means nothing to the beast. It will feel no urgency to kill you. Urgency would make it act with a kind of conscious intent that would give it a nature. It feels no pressure with every setting sun to finish the job. One day is the same as the next. The days are never-ending.

"Because it has no sense of time, it needs no nature. Time helps give dimension to every living thing. It allows you to put off chores that you know can be done later. It makes you rush to set up camp before it gets dark. It makes a general act to get his defenses in place before the enemy arrives. It makes a woman want to have children while she still has time. Time is one element that helps shape the nature of everything. Even a moth that emerges from its cocoon to live a life with wings for only a single day must mate in that day and lay eggs or there will be no more of its kind.

"The beast is untouched by time. A constituent element of its makeup is the eternity of the underworld, which is antithetical to the very notion of Creation, since the underworld is the undoing of Creation. That mix, that internal conflict, is part of the driving mechanism which churns its actions and makes it chaotic. When Nicci used Subtractive Magic to eliminate your spent blood, the beast, from its roots in the underworld, got its taste of you, or, more accurately, a measure of your magic.

"Your blood carries both Additive and Subtractive Magic. The beast was created to be able to know you by your essence, magic, thereby allowing it to transcend typical worldly limits. The beast needed you to use magic the first time so that it could link to you. Through that link, it could hunt you. But when it received that taste of your blood, it became able to know you in a whole different way.

"The unique element of magic carried in your blood, inherited from Zedd's side and from Darken Rahl's side, is what the beast tasted. That taste is what mutated it from the beast that Jagang's minions created.

"It's not your blood itself that it senses, but rather it detects those elements of magic inherent in it. That's why any use of magic will draw the beast-that's how it became more dangerous. It now recognizes any use of your magic anywhere in the world. Each person's magic is unique. The beast now knows yours. That's why you must not use your gift.

"For this very reason, the Sisters who brought the beast into existence for Jagang would have loved to have been able to use your blood in the beginning, but they had no way of getting any. They could link the beast to your gift, but without your blood, it was a weak link that didn't really know the full measure of your magic.

"Nicci gave the beast what it really needed, right after it had been awakened by your first use of the gift. She may have done it to save your life, and she may have had no choice, but she did it. Now, any use of magic can much more easily bring the blood beast to you. It would seem that Nicci has, in a way, fulfilled her oath as a Sister of the Dark."

The hair at the back of Richard's neck had lifted. He wanted to think of a way to prove Shota wrong, to find a chink in the armor of the monster she had given shape to in his mind.

"But the beast has attacked when I wasn't using magic. Just this morning it attacked at our camp. I wasn't using magic."

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