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

She turned her head and partly her body to look in the direction he indicated, and Hanse took a sideward step and a backward one, grunted when he backed into someone's fat bottom, turned, and hurried down a narrow street. More walking and a few turns brought him to Red Court, where he did indeed live, in a decent second-floor room equipped with a huge old wagon wheel of solid wood. By the time he had opened the door he had straightened up and stepped into the room with his normal gait, a smooth gliding pace that jarred no part of his body.

An emphatically red cat of improbable size greeted him with an emphatic and distinctly accusatory noise. Somehow the animal's eyes looked accusing, too. Then its nose twitched a few times and its entire demeanor changed to one of loving cajolery while its emerald gaze fixed in a stare on the small pail its man carried. It banged its sinuous body constantly against its human's legs while Hanse moved to the little kitchen area and poured beer into an orange bowl that was larger than anyone would expect to be a cat's.

"Sorry I had to leave you so long, Notable," he was saying, "but Skarth can't be seen with that big red monster too many people already know is Shadowspawn's shadow. Here you-dammit, Notable, ease up, you'll spill the beer and me too!"

He had to hold the bowl up while he squatted to restrain the cat long enough to get the bowlful of beer on the floor with the other hand. That operation was no simple one; Notable was large, heavy, and squirming like a barrel of worms. Released, he attacked the beer like an army of thirsty horses finding an oasis after days on the desert.

Hanse, called Shadowspawn and more recently Skarth, stepped back and away, paused to set his sense of direction, and thrust his left hand up his right sleeve. That hand whipped up and back just past his ear as he spun. The arm snapped forward and a long flat piece of steel appeared with a thunk m the wagon wheel set up against the far wall. Getting the thing up here had not been easy, but it was perfect, a solid wheel of wood joined by wooden pegs, not nails. He had removed the iron rim. Now the wheel showed numerous holes and gouges, the marks of throwing practice with hiltless, guardless knives and stars. The hub was particularly chewed up, while the wall above and around the target was unmarked.

"Damn. I was so concerned with getting beer for you and trying to be a limpy old man I forgot to buy anything to eat. Anything here or have you eaten it all? A couple of big rats haven't come in and emptied the larder, have they?"

Notable glanced up from his bowl, whiskers dripping, and gave Hanse a cold stare.

All in blue as ever, Strick sat alone. Before him on his blue-draped desk rested a small box and, on a scrap of parchment, several strands of human hair. Hair and casket had come to him from the hands of Shadowspawn, who had them from the privy chambers of Marype the mage. The hair was the puzzler; to a man of Strick's talents its aura was distinctly that of Markmor, and yet it was not brown or gray, but silverblond. Both Avenestra and his own examinations assured him that these hairs had not been dyed. The hair was Marype's. The . . . owner seemed to be Markmor.

"Impossible," the spellmaster muttered. "I saw him that night with Marype in Ahdio's back room. He was alive, talking, snarling at his apprentice and even told us all three his secret name-a valuable gift, if he'd been alive. But both of us sensed that he was not, not really. Marype had given him temporary life. Yet this is not dead hair. That is, it didn't come from a corpse; a revenant. It's Marype's. And Markmor's . . ."

From pale blue eyes he regarded the wall opposite without seeing itHis fingers moved over the strands they held, moved and moved while he contemplated. Since his arrival in Sanctuary he had made it his business to leam and leam, about the city and its denizens both present and past. Markmor had preceded him, and been one of the most powerful and dangerous wizards in this sad city just before the arrival of the Rankan governor. Markmor had been beyond competent, and everything Strick had learned indicated that his apprentice had not come close to learning all the master knew, or approaching his talents.

Strick's big orange-yellow mustache writhed as his lips began to move. Almost inaudible words emerged. It was a practice that aided thinking, of gathering facts and matching them, piecing them together into hypotheses and conclusions. Or maybe it was just a habit.

"For some reason Marype brought Markmor back. I know that; Ahdio and Cholly and I saw them both together, and Marype wasn't pulling strings. What does this tell me? That they are one?"

He shook his head. "No."

He stared longer at nothing, and abruptly those almost watery-pale eyes blinked and came alive. "Unless Markmor has taken the body of his aide! Oh, what a monster that would be; another Corstic to waste a young man's youth! But worse-not to destroy his body but to seize it, to use it ... By the Flame Itself, this is a very, very bad man and this poor staggering town cannot afford another such!"

After a time he heaved a sigh from the barrel chest any fighting man would have been happy to gain. Now Strick of Firaqa was torn. His burden, the Price he had paid for his powers, was twofold. One part of that Price was forever hidden beneath the flapped skullcap he wore, always. The second part was that Strick cared, cared, because he must. He had to. He must help people, not harm them. That meant he wove the spells that people called white magic, and that only.

"But . . . isn't harming MarypeIMarkmor helping people? Does it serve good to-try to; maybe with Ahdio's help-to try to send an antisorcerous spell on MarypeIMarkmor?"

In blue skullcap and tunic over blue tights as ever, Torazelan Strick ti Firaqa sat alone, and fought himself.

"That you in there, Hanse?"

"Thanks for keeping your voice down, Abohorr. You know-you must have less belly than any bartender in this town or any other!"

"I'm startin' to put it on again," the man behind the Vulgar Unicorn's bar told him. "This work is ail standin', but hardly the work carpenterin' is. I'm a lot happier, too. You? Is that a disguise?"

Abohorr couldn't see the roll of dark, dark eyes within the deep shadow of the large hat. "Must be. Here." A wrinkly brown hand stretched out to leave an imitation gemstone in Abohorr's thumbless one.

He squinted at it. "Some of your skin seems t'be flakin* off, uh, Skarth."

"Damned clay! Strick asked you to find out where somebody lives. That says he wants you to tell me."

Abohorr nodded, but didn't look happy. "I understand. But I haven't found out. That fellow hasn't been in and my casual tries to find out anything about him got me nothin'. I'm sorry, Hanse."

"Damn. Not as sorry as I am." He glanced around and paused to watch the girlish woman moving among the tables delivering cups and bowls and collecting coins. "Silky looks good. Odd; she's wearing more'n I ever saw on her! She working out all right, Ab?"