"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 2 - With a Single Spell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

wizard's apprentice."
"I am a wizard's apprentice, or I was. My master is dead."
"And the rest of it?"
"Uh..." Tobas fell silent.
"You had a good pair of oars in that boat, they tell me, and you look
fit; why didn't you row for shore?"
"Uh..."
"You wanted to get aboard this ship, didn't you?"
"Yes," Tobas admitted after a moment's hesitation, seeing no alternative.
"I thought so. And I don't think it's because you were afraid of what the
Pirate Towners would do to you, either, not with that accent you have." He sat
back and looked up at Tobas, his hands pressed together before his chest.
"Well," he continued. "Wherever you're from, I'd guess you're pretty much
alone in the world or you wouldn't be here; and whoever you are, I don't mind
letting you work your passage to Ethshar of the Sands, or even Ethshar of the
Spices. You will work, though. The overlords have decreed that castaways and
refugees are to receive free passage; and if I'm wrong about you, you can go
and complain to old Ederd the Fourth when we reach Ethshar of the Sands, but
until then you'll work. If you don't, we'll put you back in that boat we found
you in. Fair enough?"
Tobas nodded mute agreement and did not dare to ask for an explanation of
the difference between Ethshar of the Sands and Ethshar of the Spices or who
Ederd IV might be.
He allowed himself to be led meekly away and assigned a hammock. He was
on his way to the galley to help the cook with the crew's dinner when it
finally sank in that he had made it, despite the failure of his concocted
story. They were not going to hang him as a pirate, nor throw him back in the
sea. He was on his way to Ethshar to seek his fortune and find a new home!
He smiled. His bad luck was obviously past. He had needed a ship and here
he was on a ship. He had needed a boat to reach the ship and he had found one.
 Then he remembered that he had stolen the boat, which the ship's crew had
hauled aboard and lashed down on deck, and the smile faded. Some day, he
promised himself, when he was rich and powerful, he would pay those two lovers
back for their boat and for the trouble he had put them through.
And for the chicken, too, while he was at it.


CHAPTER 5

The first port of call was Ethshar of the Sands, and at the sight of the
city Tobas, already unsettled by the strange, flat landscape they had been
sailing past, lost his nerve completely. He had not realized that a city could
be so large. He had known Telven wasn't much, but he had thought that Shan on
the Sea was a good-sized town, with a population he guessed at a thousand or
more.
The entire population of Shan on the Sea could be lost without a trace in
Ethshar of the Sands.
Tobas had first begun to have misgivings when they left the familiar
hills and patchy beaches behind, passing league after league of almost
featureless flat coastline, flat as a calm sea, an endless plain of sand and