"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Dus 4 - Book of Silence" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

head, and its wings were polished to mirror brightness. "Ah, my lord," the old
man said, "you have excellent taste."
"What does it do?" Garth asked.
"Why, what else would a bird do but fly?" He pulled a silver key from
somewhere, inserted it in an opening in the mechanical gull's back, then
gestured for Garth to follow him back outside. "Let me show you."
The overman followed and watched as the toymaker turned the key. With a
small click, the key stopped; the old man pulled it out and, with a proud
smile, cast the gull away.
Garth instinctively reached out to catch it, to keep its graceful curves
from being scarred or broken by its fall, but it did not drop into his waiting
hands. Instead, its metal wings caught the breeze and flapped once, twice,
lazily, with the languid grace of a living sea gull, and it swooped away.
Riding the wind, it glided upward, then looped back and circled slowly
overhead. Garth gaped in astonishment.
For several long minutes the gull soared overhead, flapping smoothly now
and then, gleaming golden in the morning sun; then, gradually, it settled
lower and lower, until at last, with a rueful smile, the toymaker reached up
and plucked it out of the sky.
Garth heard a click and a final soft whirr, and the gull was still.
 Garth stared at the man with deep respect. "It is very beautiful," he
said. "I was not aware that such things could be built of mere metal."
The toymaker looked down, obviously embarrassed. "Well, actually," he
admitted, "they can't. I cheat. It's not just clockwork."
"It's not?"
"No. I use magic."
"Oh," Garth said knowingly. He had seen magic before, more of it than he
liked. At least, he thought, this magic was harmless.
"I didn't originally-at least, I don't think I did. I started off using
just clockwork when I was an apprentice, but I found right from the first that
I could make machines that no one else could understand, things that worked
when by all rights they should not have. Even when I built my clocks and toys
in the usual ways, mine would run far longer and more smoothly than any of the
others. I got better and better at it, too, until I was doing things that were
plainly impossible to do with just clockwork. I had no idea how I did what I
did back then; it simply came to me, as naturally as breathing, without my
ever thinking about it. When I realized what was happening, I studied sorcery
briefly; even though my teacher said I had a real talent, I didn't care for
it. It seemed too dangerous, too uncertain. I went back to clockwork, but now
I know a bit more about what I'm doing. I even use spells intentionally now,
though I still make them up, rather than follow the old formulae. As I said, I
have the knack for it. A fellow who came through here last year, fleeing from
Sland, a wizard by the name of Karag, told me that it wasn't anything to be
concerned about. He said that there are a lot of minor magical talents like
mine scattered about; probably one of my ancestors back in the Twelfth Age,
when magic was widespread, was a wizard of some sort, and I inherited a bit of
his lingering power without knowing it."
"I had no idea it could work that way," Garth said.
"Neither did I when I was young, but it seems that's just how it does
work. That gull wouldn't fly if anyone else had made it. I've shown other