"Joel Rosenberg - The Warrior Lives" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

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The Warrior Lives
Vol. 5
The Guardians
of the Flame

For Sprague and Catherine,
role models
Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank the people who helped: Will Shetterly and Emma Bull, who found me the place to finish
this book; Pamela Dean and Nate Bucklin, for the last-minute proofreading; the rest of the Minneapolis
SF crowd, for reasons both trivial and profound; Mark J. McGarry, who made it better, again; Felix
Tang and John Jaser and the other good folks at Logix Microcomputer; Scott Raun, who quibbled a bit;
Harry Leonard, who quibbled a lot; my editor, John Silbersack; my wife, Felicia; and always,
particularly, my agent, Eleanor Wood.



PRELUDE
Laheran
Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.

—Euripides




"You have to find him," said Slavers' Guildmaster Yryn. "You have to stop him."

Yryn looked old, and stoop-shouldered. His neck seemed to have trouble holding up his massive head,
and his eyes were more of a dull gray than the sharp, piercing slate-gray that Laheran remembered from
his apprenticeship in the guild.

As they walked through the garden, Yryn fondled the piece of sun-bleached leather, his nail-bitten
fingers stroking it as if it were a magical talisman, which it wasn't.

There was little enough in the world to be sure of, Laheran thought, but the leather wasn't magical. It had
been carefully examined by a competent wizard, a master in Pandathaway's Wizards' Guild, and while
the wizards couldn't always be relied on—they were notorious cowards, for one thing—they could be
trusted to know if something was magical.


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The inner courtyard of Slavers' Guildhall was a quiet place, one for reflection. Marble benches