Bone Lord 4, стр. 45
“Yes, and that’s what almost everyone thought when he first made these outrageous promises. Nobody should believe such ridiculous things, but as I’m sure is the case in Prand, there are always a few fools who fall for the empty promises of charlatans.”
“Believe me, Zhenwan, there are plenty of fools in Prand,” I muttered darkly, thinking of Elandriel and of all of his lackeys, who swallowed every one of his lies without question.
“Well, a few idiots gave gold to this lowly street magician, who by this stage had started to call himself the Great Prophet of the Spirit of Prosperity. Everyone laughed at these idiots, who were so easily parted from their gold. Nobody expected them to ever see that money again; they thought the Great Prophet would disappear with what he’d clearly stolen and never be heard from again. They were all wrong.”
“Interesting,” I murmured.
“The ‘fools’ were quick to rub their success in everyone’s faces when they got their gold back, as promised, in quantities a hundredfold of what they’d given.”
“And these people kept their promise to reject their former religions and gods?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you, if such a wondrous fortune brightened your life?”
“I guess if I was enough of a fool to believe a promise like that in the first place, and then the gold actually came through, I would,” I answered. “So, this guy built his tower, somehow generated a hundred times the gold he was donated, and gave it all back to his donors. Then what? What did he do with this tower?”
“Nobody knows,” Zhenwan answered. “But he built it on a mountain in a remote part of Yeng, and strange storms and a lot of lightning have occurred on a daily basis since then. People in that area soon began to speak of a powerful warlock wielding terrifying magic in the mountains.”
“The lowly street magician finds a mysterious object, starts a cult, and becomes a powerful warlock. Hmm, so where does the whole reign of terror thing start, and what’s making people like you flee your homeland?”
“Of course, when others saw that the apparent ‘victims’ of the conman’s scheme were not victims at all, but instead receivers of great quantities of gold, people started falling over themselves to renounce their gods and donate their life savings to the Spirit of Prosperity. It was a gold rush of the worst kind. But instead of bringing prosperity to our land, as the Great Prophet had promised, this gold rush brought chaos. People left their jobs, abandoned their fields, sold their houses and possessions. The second wave who donated their gold also got their hundredfold return, as the first lot did, but for the tens of thousands who did this afterward and sold their homes and everything they owned—nothing.”
“The Warlock was working a long con,” I said. “So, now he’s got his gold, he’s got his tower, he’s got what sounds like a great deal of magical power, but how does he benefit from chaos, from starvation and famine and death across the land?”
Was he another Death God? Did I have a rival in Yeng? Or was he something else altogether?
Zhenwan shrugged and shook his head. “I do not know, Lord Chauzec. I cannot understand why he would do this to Yeng.”
“There has to be some reason he’d want this collapse,” I said. “It must be serving some greater, more nefarious purpose. Is all of this connected to the Hooded Man?”
“You know of the Hooded Man?”
“We’ve met.”
“Then you must be glad you weren’t a young woman. He steals such maidens in the dead of night, and their bodies are later found drained of blood. It has nothing to do with gold or magic or rejection of gods.”
“You don’t think there might be some sort of connection?” I asked.
“If there is, I don’t know what it could be. The Hooded Man appeared in Yeng only recently, but he has quickly spread his terror and bloodshed far and wide, appearing on opposite sides of the continent in the same day, by some magic.”
“Portals. The motherfucker uses portals,” I said, remembering how the Hooded Man had fled through the portal with his tail tucked before I killed Rodrick.
“Whatever magic he uses, I doubt it has anything to do with the Warlock,” Zhenwan said.
“Okay. What about dragons? Is that something related to the Spirit of Prosperity or the Dragon Cult?”
“Ah, now that’s something that is connected to the Warlock and his so-called prosperity, without a doubt,” Zhenwan said. “Nobody knows what these things are, but they are not dragons in the strict sense of the word, because they cannot fly. But many of the villages near the mountains where the Warlock’s tower is located have been deserted because of these creatures. They started to appear shortly after the Warlock finished constructing his tower and would come in the dead of night and massacre entire villages. The few people who survived described the beasts as huge reptilian monsters with a ravenous appetite for human flesh.”
“Do you think the Warlock created these monsters?”
“He may well have, but wherever they came from, they are part of the three plagues that have devastated my homeland,” Zhenwan said sadly. “Between the Spirit of Prosperity cult and the chaos it caused, the Hooded Man’s murder rampage, and the threat of the reptilian monsters, Yeng has become a dangerous place.”
“And what does your Glorious Emperor have to say about these things? Why hasn’t he done anything?”
“The Glorious Emperor hides in his City of Jewels, waited on by thousands of servants and living in the lap of luxury, as he and the Royal Dynasty always have. They are protected by his personal army and care nothing for the fate of us commoners. Gah! I spit on the Glorious Emperor and his useless Royal Dynasty! At least now that