"Terry Brooks - Landover 01 - Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

Price: $1,000,000.

Personal interview and financial disclosure.

Inquire of Meeks, home office.


That was all it read. The artist's colorful rendering depicted a knight on horseback engaged in battle with a fire-breathing dragon, a beautiful and rather thinly clad damsel shrinking from the conflict before a tower wall, and a dark-robed wizard lifting his hands as if to cast an awesome and life-stealing spell. Some creatures that might have been Elves or Gnomes or some such scampered about in the background, and the towers and parapets of great castles loomed against a gathering of hills and mists.

It had the look of something out of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

"This is nuts!" he muttered almost without thinking.

He stared at the item in disbelief, certain that he must be mistaken. Then he read it again. He read it a third time. It read the same. He finished his scotch in a single gulp and chewed on the ice, irritated with the nonsensicality of the offering. A million dollars for a fairy-tale kingdom? It was ridiculous. It had to be some kind of joke.

He threw down the catalogue, jumped to his feet, and crossed to the bar to mix himself a fresh drink. He stared momentarily at his reflection in the mirrored cabinet - a man of medium height, lean, trim, and athletic-looking, his face rather drawn, with high cheekbones and forehead, slightly receding hairline, hawk nose and piercing blue eyes. He was a man of thirty-nine going on fifty, a man on the verge of passing into middle age too young.

Escape into your dreams...

He crossed back to the couch, placed the drink on the coffee table and picked up the Wishbook once more. Again he read the item on Landover. He shook his head. No such place could possibly exist. The promo was a tease, a hype - what the car business called punting. The truth was masked in the rhetoric. He chewed gingerly at the inside of his lip.

Still, there wasn't all that much rhetoric being used to promote the item. And Rosen's was a highly respected department store; they were not likely to offer anything that they could not deliver, should a buyer appear.

He grinned. What was he thinking? What buyer? Who in his right mind would even consider...? But of course he was questioning himself now. He was the one considering.

He had been standing there, drinking his drink and thinking about how he didn't belong; and when he had picked up the Wishbook, the item on Landover had caught his attention right away. He was the one who felt himself the outsider in his own world, who had always felt himself the outsider, who was seeking always a way to escape what he was.

And now here was his chance.

His grin broadened. This was crazy! He was actually contemplating doing something that no sane man would even think twice about!

The scotch was working its way to his head now, and he got up again to walk it off. He looked at his watch, thinking of Miles, and suddenly he didn't want to go to that bar meeting. He didn't want to go anywhere.

He walked to the phone and dialed his friend.

"Bennett," the familiar voice answered.

"Miles, I've decided not to go tonight. Hope you don't mind."

There was a pause. "Doc, is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me." Miles loved to call him Doc, ever since the early days when they went up against Wells-Fargo on that corporate buyout. Doc Holiday, courtroom gunfighter. It drove Ben nuts. "Look, you go on without me."

"You're going." Miles was unflappable. "You said you were going and you're going. You promised."

"So I take it back. Lawyers do it all the time - you read the papers."

"Ben, you need to get out. You need to see something of the world besides your office and your apartment - however lavish the two may be. You need to let your colleagues in the profession know that you're still alive!"

"You tell them I'm alive. Tell them I'll make the next meeting for sure. Tell them anything. But forget about me for tonight."