"Craig Shaw Gardner - Arabian 2 - A Bad Day for Ali Baba" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Craig Shaw)

brave Sinbad's previous story seem like the slightest of rumors
whispered in the wind.

So it is that I, too, shall return to that time before time, when Baghdad,
whose towers seem to be made from the light of the sky and the colors
of the dawn rather than common mud and clay, was the greatest city in
all the earth. But this is a tale of other lands as well, with dark and
forbidding forests so large that they hold trees equal to one hundred
times the entire population of Persia, places so great that they might
hide the best and worst of men and beasts. And my tale shall travel
even farther still, past great and searing deserts, where lurk those wild
things banned from all the cities of men, and where both man and beast
might go made from heat and thirst.

But my story is more than a simple catalogue of the strange and the
terrifying. It is the tale of a certain man, of humble bearing and modest
occupation, named Ali Baba, and how a chance encounter led him to
great wealth and even greater danger.

Aha! I hear certain of you cry. This is the tale of the Forty Thieves!
And yes, this is the tale of the Exactly Forty Thieves, and how they fell
upon hard times with their Greater Caravan Redistribution Program.
What, do you ask, do I mean by exactly? And what did the thieves do
to all those caravans?

Perhaps you do not know the true story of the forty thieves, after all,
including the interference of certain djinn and items of exceptional
magic. Perhaps you would be better served if you ceased your chatter
and began to listen. Perhaps you have even guessed that my name is
indeed Ali Baba, and, especially you noisy lot in the back, perhaps you
forget that I once was one of the most talented of woodcutters, and
have retained a facility for the exacting use of exceedingly sharp
instruments.

That is much better. A storyteller needs to hear his own voice. I shall
begin.

And please, this time, no giggling during the dramatic passages.
BOOK THE FIRST:
being
ALI BABA'S STORY
 Chapter the First,
in which we find there is more to a woodcutter's lot than a pile of
logs.

Every man, it is said, has his destiny, and it is a wise man who accepts
what is written for him. Ah, but there is a catch upon that very line, for
what man can find that scrap of parchment upon which his own destiny
is writ?