"Sharon Green - The Hidden RealmsUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

CHAPTGR OMG

t wasn't my fault. I'll be the first to admit it usually is my fault, but not that time. It was a simple accident, and Master Haddil shouldn't have—But maybe I ought to start from the beginning.

At first it was a perfectly ordinary day. I'd dressed to go riding right after breakfast, but the heavy gray clouds that had been threatening since the day before finally let loose. It wasn't exactly rain that came down, not with the air as cold as it was. Half sleet and half snow, likely to become all one or the other before very long, and nothing any sane person would deliberately go out in. I'd stared at it through the diamond-paned window of my kitchen, not very pleased.

And then I'd gotten curious. Water fell from the skies in different forms, but it was still water. We drank it, bathed in it, washed things with it, cooked with it—but how much experimentation had been done? If memory served there wasn't very much, and what better day to correct that? There were ail sorts of things to try with water, so I headed for my workshop to get started.

All right, so I didn't change out of the heavy riding clothes and boots. I tend to keep my house on that world on the cool side; when I'm in the mood for cold weather, I want to know it's there. Staying in those clothes shouldn't have made any difference ...

Well, I gestured a bucket of water into being, then thought about what I wanted to try first. A sorceress at my level is

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SHARON

capable of quite a lot, but I didn't want to use magic to make water do things. I wanted to investigate water, with magic just another tool. But what was there to try . . . ?

And then I saw the single drop, shimmering at the rim of the bucket. What was a single drop, and how much water had to be present before it became two drops, or three, or a dozen? Some drops were smaller or bigger than others, so where did the cutoff point come? Was it possible to extend the cutoff point, using magic only lightly? How far beyond was it practical to go?

The questions increased to a dozen, then began multiplying. On top of that I'd gotten an idea, which in turn suggested a test to answer the questions. Wording my spell carefully, I used the water in the bucket to make a sphere a foot and a half in diameter. I was able to hold the sphere in my hands without bursting it like the soap bubble it resembled, which was one of the things the spell had specified. I had to be careful, but 1 could hold it.

Once that was done, I brought into being nine more gallon buckets of water. The first question to be answered was how many gallons the one-gallon sphere would be able to hold without rupturing or leaking. That meant filling it slowly and watching for the natural stress point, not forcing it to hold what / wanted it to. A wizard could have garnered the waters of an ocean into a ball; that wasn't what I was trying to accomplish.

I had just finished adding the contents of the fourth bucket when the Summons came. The sphere was very full but not yet leaking, and then my attention was taken by the entry that chimed into existence not two feet away. It looked like a perfectly ordinary doorway, except that the name Haddil sat in large block letters on its top. A quick spell matched the master's true resonance with the work, which meant it really was him doing the Summoning. Come now, was the message, one Master Haddil had never sent before. There had to be some kind of trouble . . .

Without wasting another moment, I stepped through the entry. Moving from world to world like that is effortless, so much so that you sometimes forget to watch where you're walking. One step, after all, and not even across a raised threshold. It let me out just short of a real doorway, one

The HIDDЂM RCAIM 3

that did, unfortunately, have a raised threshold ...

So it wasn't my fault. Maybe I did forget I was still holding the sphere of water, but that wouldn't have mattered if the entry had been put beyond the raised door sill. All my attention was on the room I approached, trying to see who was in it. It seemed to be a conference room in the Palace of Ease at Yellow Rivers, and the master wasn't alone. People came in by ones and twos through other doorways that must also have had entries behind them, and Master Haddil was in the midst of creating even more. I heard part of one spell as I approached, and then—

And then my heavy riding boots made me trip over the sill. My reflexes were good enough to keep me from falling, which was the major part of the problem. As my arms flew up to reestablish balance, my hands threw the sphere of water I'd forgotten I was holding. I recovered my footing in time to see the sphere go sailing toward Master Haddil, and immediately felt relieved. Master Haddil, after all, was warded against magic with his own wizard's strength, so my sphere couldn't possibly reach him.

And it didn't. But his warding also didn't destroy the sphere, as I'd thought it would. Instead, the sphere bounced—straight toward the man who stood beside Master Haddil on his right. Again, since the man was Sighted, it shouldn't have mattered; his own warding should have protected him. What's that saying about "should" and "would" and "could"? To make a long story even longer, he wasn't warded. The sphere hit him head-on, burst the way it was supposed to, and drowned him in five gallons of water.

"Chalaine!" Master Haddil screamed, staring in horror at the man who was drenched from head to foot. "What have you done this time? Have you any idea? Even a hint?"

Chalaine, that's me. Master Haddil pronounces it as though it should be Abysmal or Catastrophe, but he's always done that. Things tend to go badly for me, especially when he's around.

So I was used to being accused, and that's why I didn't say anything as I watched the big drowned man use one hand to wipe water out of his eyes. His long, golden blond hair hung in strings, his dark tunic and leather

SHAROM

breeches sagged, and his boots must have been full. Even his swordbelt was wet, and I had just enough time to wonder why a magic user would be wearing a swordbelt before he moved his hand in a banishing gesture. All the water and wetness disappeared immediately, of course, leading me to also wonder why no one else had thought to do that.

Like Master Haddil. "Forgive me, Your Highness, but I should have done that," he apologized, tugging at his bright yellow robes. "It's just that girl — when she appears, my mind ceases to function. Are you all right?"