"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 1 - The Misenchanted Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

to see what I'm doing. You can either get yourself out of here before dawn, or
you can stay and let me enchant your sword -- or you can stay and annoy me
enough that I'll turn you into... into something unpleasant. That would be
better than killing you, at least. You suit yourself. Right now I'm going to
try and get some sleep and see if I can forget that I haven't had my dinner
and that my house is a pile of ash. You do as you please." He turned and
stamped his way up out of the marsh onto the mounded rim of the crater.
Valder stood for a moment, sword in hand and his bare feet in briny muck,
thinking it over.
After due consideration he shrugged and followed the old man.


CHAPTER 3

The rain began around midnight, Valder judged, though after the clouds
covered the moons it was hard to be sure of the time. It trailed off into
morning mist an hour or two before dawn. He was soaked through and had slept
very little when the sun's rays managed to slip through the trees to the
southeast and spill across the marsh, slowly burning away the mist. Worst of
all, he was dreadfully thirsty and ravenously hungry; he was unsure whether a
splash of marsh water was responsible, or the blood of the Sanguinary
Deception, but something had disrupted his Spell of Sustenance. The bloodstone
was still secure in its pouch, but his fast had been broken.
The wizard had stayed dry throughout the rain, Valder noticed when the
morning light illuminated the old man's white hair; it was still a tangle of
knots and fluff smeared with phantasmal blood but not plastered to his head as
Valder's was. The soldier assumed that the hermit had achieved this enviable
state of desiccation by somehow keeping the aversion spell going.
The old man did not appear very comfortable, though; at first light he
was up and pawing through the debris that lined the crater where his house had
stood, spattering unreal gore in all directions.
He did not appear to be performing a spell, but Valder never felt very
confident when dealing with unfamiliar magicians of any sort and knew better
than to risk interrupting a wizard at work. Besides, by daylight the lingering
effects of the Deception made the little hermit unspeakably repulsive.
Valder had spent the night curled up between two grassy mounds, above the
waterline but still fairly sheltered. Now he climbed up atop one of the
hillocks and settled down to watch the old man.
The hermit heard the rustling and looked up. "Oh, there you are,
soldier," he said. "Have you seen anything to eat?"
"No," Valder said. "Have you?"
"No, and I'm hungry. My stomach has been growling for hours. I missed my
dinner, you know."
"I know. I'm hungry, too, and thirsty."
"Oh. Spell broke, did it? Can't say I'm really sorry, after all the
trouble you've brought me. There's a clean stream back in the woods, over that
way," he said, pointing vaguely northeast. "If you can find something that
will hold water, go fetch some. You can drink your fill while you're there; I
don't care. I'm going to see about catching some breakfast, since I can't find
anything left of my pantry. You might bring back some firewood, too, so I can