"12 - Stealer's Sky 1.0a" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert)

Strick sighed and looked morose. "Nothing, yet."

In an astonishingly young and vibrant voice for such an oldster, the man called Skarth said succinctly, "Shit."

"Wait." With a smallish smile twitching at his mouth, Strick dropped a small brown and yellow tiger-eye into the brown old hand.

"Glass," Skarth said in instant appraisal, and Strick laughed.

"True. But it's also today's message token. Hand it to Abohorr and ask him what you want to know. By tonight either he or Ahdio will know where Tarkle stays."

On the way out of Strick's, Skarth offered the ridiculously disguised girl his hand. She shrank away. She hustled along beside him, while he walked bent, rolling along like a sailor, clonking the hard-packed earth of the streets and "streets" with his staff.

She had one sentence of him as they made their way through a nice calm windless Sanctuary; Taya asked how it was that he was obviously of considerable age and yet his mustache was so black.

"Dye," Skarth said, from the throat. "The only way a S'danzo could have red hair."

Taya clamped her soft and sensuous lips and wasted no more words on so surly an escort.

When at last they entered the area called the Maze with its noise of yapping dogs and bustling, jostling people amid the odors of cooking and sweat and the ordure of yapping dogs, Taya shrank, bundling into herself and her acres of clothing. Someone jostled her hard and she sought Skarth's hand. He jerked it away.

"Clay might come off," he muttered in manner snarly, and led her on, on to that tavern with the laughably obscene sign featuring an impossible animal performing an impossible act upon itself.

Marype, apprentice to the master mage Markmor until the latter's timely demise, stood gazing down at the smallish pile of white ash in the bottom of a bowl of pure silver. The face of Marype was serene, brows up and eyes large and contemplative.

"You had a short and decent life but not too much fun of late, hmm, Marype?" he murmured. "Once I was out of the way you took over this fine palatial home of that slimy krrf-dealer trapped forever in un-life , . . tricked that doltish slut Amoli into helping you without knowing your master plan . . . only to lose that old leech's earring to that most uncommon of common thieves' Next you showed my training well: actually succeeded in bringing me back to come up with an ingenious vengeance on that thief . . . and yet got us both defeated by a gluemaker with a belly the size of the barrel of beer he must store in it. Demeaned and shamed me in the process . . . and forced me to yield up my secret name to the gluemaker and those other two. In the event you wondered why, why as you felt your self leaving you, Marype; why, why I would take your body and leave you in mine and make sure that this time it is dead without possibility of return - . . well, that was it. To be demeaned and shamed by those three, to know they were laughing at us. Are laughing at us. That, darling apprentice, that I could not and cannot bear."

Looking down at what had been Marype and Markmor, the Marype who was not Marype heaved a mighty sigh. And still he stared down at the ash that had been both he and his apprentice. Nearby a happy little rodent in a golden cage glanced up from its dinner, worked its mouth and whiskers rapidly, and went back to dining. .

"Your first plan was good, boy. The Empire of Ranke has failed and is dying. The battle of those two power-seeking females nearly destroyed this town, and Kadakithis the Rankan was lax and late-is late-in coping. Simple matter to spread poison words and poison thought about him. Simple matter to see his outre wife dead and bring about his complete fall; to take full control of this town! Firaqa is well governed, ruled by wizards . . . why not Sanctuary by a wizard!"

The face of Marype, a not unhandsome one, smiled. He glanced over at the cage of pure gold on another of this large chamber's three worktables. Within was a happy vole-a darkish gray mouse but for its short tailhappily dining on choice foods. In that rodent of necessity reposed the soul of the mage Markmor, else he could not have assumed the body of his apprentice. Markmor was long dead, resurrected by Marype only to run afoul of the gluemaker Chollander. Now Marype was dead; now the essential intelligence of Markmor resided in this body. That created anomaly, for a body could not house two souls-and yet without the soul of Marype this one would be impossible to maintain. Markmor had no desire to have the well-made, youthful body he now occupied rot into putrescence about him.

The brain of Markmor guided the body of his apprentice and son of his former chief rival, years agone. Within the body necessarily remained the soul of Marype, and so-the vole. It was a happy vole, mindless, well taken care of, and well guarded in this spell-warded chamber. "Shadowspawn, that street slime Hanse, is disposed of," Markmor said, pacing over to a mirror to look into the face of Marype and watch its mouth move. "A city cannot be taken without money, and plenty is coming in, thanks to your plan." He smiled, watching Marype smile at him.

Long ago Markmor had learned to make gold. Good gold; real gold. He was not sure that any other sorcerer had ever succeeded. Yet if he simply created the gold necessary to bring about his ends in Sanctuary, he would need more and more and ever more, for he would have destroyed its precarious economy. No, money must not merely be created but be generated; earned, brought into Sanctuary, to aid the economy rather than harm it. That had been Marype's ingenious plan, for while he had been a stupid boy he had not been ignorant or without cleverness.

The same as Shadowspawn, the master mage thought. And so the rising number of persons missing from Sanctuary. They were not missing. They were merely relocated in the Isles of Bandara, to the considerable profit of Markmor of Sanctuary.

Markmor of Sanctuary strode to the door, slim and young and leggy in black tights and boots under a belted tunic the color of old gold. "Tarkle!"

The hulking fellow appeared, a man beyond homely but looking respectful-ugly both inside and out, Markmor knew, with hair a brown tangle like an overgrown bramble patch fit only to hide a fearful rabbit. But then Markmor also knew without caring that his own new beauty was external only.

Respectful too were Tarkle's manner, and tone, and choice of response:

"Sir?"

"You and your associates will do tonight's work in Downwind, Tarkle."

"Downwind."