"Barbara Hambly - A Night with the Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

ready, for the return of the wight, "and Battlesow. Why 'in a manner of speaking'? Did you
it into being?"

Teryne spat, a crones eloquence. Elia said, "No. I was not informed of the town council
meeting at which the decision to-to create such a thing-was taken." She added drily, "From
can learn, a number of us weren't."

"I could have told them," Teryne said in her harsh, surprisingly deep voice. "I did tell th
Brannis Cornmonger, and Mowyer Silks, and all their merchant friends. Told them old Aga
Givna was so angry and spiteful in her old age that if they opened up her tomb and let the
charnal-wight claim her body, the way that book of theirs told them how, she'd turn on anyo
she could get at, not just the troops of the Prince."

"Book?" Like Sun Wolf, Starhawk was always on the lookout for the ancient lore of the
craft, the only remnant of teaching left. "They had a book of magic?"

The old woman gestured like one shooing flies. "Brannis Cornmonger, that's Mayor-thou
now he calls himself President of the Independent Polity, if you please." Her voice would h
burned holes in a linen shirt. "Only it's not a proper book, not thick, that'll tell you the why
the wherefore. Like so be it's a cookbook, that'll just say how."

"Oh, great!" Starhawk rolled her eyes. Sun Wolf had a collection of such grimoires, pick
up in his travels. He also had a collection of appalling stories about people who'd followed
recipes enclosed therein, without inquiring as to what spells of limitation or protection mig
have been left out of those terse instructions to mix sea salt with human blood, or to repeat
certain words in certain places at the dark of the moon. "So these idiots just pulled the
ward-spells off a tomb and set up a drawing-circle…"

"To do Brannis Cornmonger justice," said Elia, wrapping her graying braids onto the ba
of her head and rearranging the pins that held them, "I personally would rather not have Pri
Chare's forces take and sack the town. It isn't anything to me if Cornmonger gets fed hot coa
by Chare's executioners, but having neighbors, and sisters, and nieces, and a mother who st
to be sold into slavery after being raped repeatedly, I do understand our mayors-excuse me
president's-attitude." She folded her arms, and regarded the three mercenaries with accusin
eyes. "The only problem is that wights apparently don't prey simply on one side, no matter
what kind of instructions get written in the circle of their calling."

"As I told him," Teryne said again. She tilted her head a little to regard her friend, then t
mercenaries before her. "Not that he'd listen to me. 'Old wives tales,' he said; as if reading
scrap of a cookbook made him a wizard instead of just a man who used to live next door to
grandson of one. I notice the man who wrote that book isn't around no more."

"Well, the Wizard-King pretty much took care of all competition, good and bad, before h
was killed," said Starhawk. She scratched the sweat and gore from her loose soft tousle of
hair, and turned back to consider the starlit glimmer of wet ground and mucky shadows whe
the wight had been. "You'd think he might have had the sense to ask, though."

"People often don't want to know," Elia said, "when they think they see a way out of thei
difficulties."