"Mercedes Lackey - Owl Mage 1 - Owlflight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

heroic pose, both hands upraised with what were supposed to be bolts of lightning coming from her
hands. But the “lightning bolts” looked more like sickly pale-green snakes, the Companion looked like a
lumpy cow, the face of the Herald-Mage like a blob of dough with two currants stuck in for eyes and a
slash of orange carrot for a mouth. She apparently had twisted legs, no neck, and enormous, pillowlike
breasts. The Herald’s uniform and her Companion weren’t even white, they were a disgusting
muddy-yellow sort of color, as if the painter hadn’t been able to afford a pure white pigment. Or maybe
he’d used a cheap varnish that had yellowed as it aged. Darkwind at least looked human, but the bird on
his shoulder had more in common with a fat chicken ready for the pot than any hawk that Darian had
ever seen. The rest of the portraits were pretty much on the same level of skill - or lack of it - the firebird
posing with the Adept was so ineptly done that most of the villagers thought it was supposed to represent
a goose and had wondered aloud out of Justyn’s hearing why a mage would have such a silly familiar. As
for Firesong’s mask - the Adept was never seen without one - it looked like a child’s drawing of a
sunflower, and if everyone didn’t already know that it was a mask, a reasonable person could have
thought the painting was of some fabulous monster.
It was painfully obvious that no woman had ever touched this cottage since the day Justyn moved
in. Darian had gotten used to it over the last six months, but there was no doubt that it was a
worse-than-typical aged bachelor’s study. Littering the leaning and badly-made bookcases were an
assortment of cheap and flashy “magical” implements, a few tattered old books, a lot of unrecognizable
but definitely dead animals which were allegedly “preserved” in some way, several spider webs, a couple
of cracked mugs, the upper half of the skull of some largish animal, an apple core, and a great deal of
dust. Darian had tried to clean the place up when he’d first been sent here, out of pure self-interest, but
being told sharply to leave things alone on numerous occasions, he’d lost interest in cleaning up anything
but his own little corner around his pallet in the loft.
Sitting right in front of Wizard Kyllian’s portrait on the top of a tipsy-looking bookcase was a
beat-up and scruffy old black tomcat currently engaged in cleaning his hind leg, which stuck stiffly straight
up into the air as the cat’s tongue rasped at the thin fur. This was Justyn’s familiar, or so he claimed. It
certainly matched its Master, for a less-graceful cat Darian had never seen. It seemed to share the
villagers’ contempt for its Master and his apprentice, ignoring both of them with a disdain more in
keeping with the pampered pet of a princess than of a patchy-furred mongrel of indeterminate age, with a
broken tail and chewed-up ears.
Carefully placed in a rack on the wall was a rather plain looking, partially split walking stick with
a bit of crystal embedded in the top which Justyn said was his “wizard’s staff.” That, along with four
chairs (none matching) and the thick, warped oak table with a book under one leg keeping it straight,
comprised all of the furnishings of the room.
The table was covered with jars and bottles, the remains of last night’s dinner in stacked-up
plates that had been shoved out of the way, bits of scribbled-on paper, burned-out ends of candles, and
one empty wine bottle. Darian glanced with guilt at the stack of dirty dishes; he was supposed to have
cleaned them up this morning, but he had been in such a hurry to get up and out before Justyn thought of
giving him a lesson that he had neglected that duty entirely. Now he’d have to scrub them with sand to
get all the dried-on gravy off them, and he’d have to do so before they could eat or they wouldn’t have
anything to eat tonight’s dinner on. At least he’d remembered to take the turnip pasties over to the baker
in time for them to go into the oven. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d forgotten and they’d had to
make do with bread, raw turnips, onions, and sometimes a little cheese.
But the mess evidently didn’t bother Justyn at all; when Darian had first been apprenticed to him,
the place had looked much the same. The day he’d moved his things in, Darian had been strictly
forbidden to touch anything on any of the bookshelves without specific permission, which frankly led
Darian to believe that old Justyn wasn’t certain what was on those shelves himself. It had occurred to him
that Justyn was afraid that if Darian cleaned and organized things, the boy would ruin the wizard’s best
excuse for not getting magics done immediately when people asked him for them. Hunting for this or that
ingredient or piece of apparatus was a good excuse for stalling, and as Darian knew from his own