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

too late, fortunately. I was not. Go, now, dream your own harmless little
dreams and leave me to mine."
Tobas obeyed, backing out to the ladder and departing the hold, glad to
get away from the cool air, the smell of the hanging meat, and the warlock's
pale, haggard face.
There were no further disturbances, as the warlock had promised, but
Tobas was quite convinced now, as he settled back in his hammock, that he
would not be pursuing warlockry as a career, whatever happened. He would stick
to wizardry; it seemed much safer, despite the occasional risk of spells
backfiring or getting out of hand, as the combination of the protective rune
and Thrindle's Combustion had. He was, after all, already an initiate into the
art, with his ritual dagger prepared and charged, a member, however minor, of
the mighty Wizards' Guild. All he had to do was learn more spells in order to
be a real wizard; becoming a warlock apparently involved a good many mysteries
and dangers of its own that he had never heard of before, and he did not care
to investigate them further.
He was also now convinced that he was having a real, genuine adventure,
of the sort stories are told about. Telven had had no excitement to compare to
screaming warlocks or cities like Ethshar of the Sands, and the busy, crowded
life of the ship was far more interesting than life on the village farms. Not
better, but more interesting.
Not, he reminded himself, that he wanted to spend his whole life at sea
or go about having adventures; that was not the way to become rich and reach a
comfortable old age. Storytellers' heroes notwithstanding, adventures were
dangerous things that could easily get a person killed. At Ethshar of the
Spices, he promised himself, he would go ashore and look for an easier, safer,
and more promising career. He knew he would not be able to get another wizard
to take him on as an apprentice, but perhaps he could somehow pay one to teach
him a few more spells. That would be all he needed to begin a quiet career in
wizardry. Once he had earned a little money, he would find himself a home
somewhere.
With that thought, he fell asleep.
In the morning, when he came up on deck after cleaning the breakfast
dishes, he almost changed his mind.
Ethshar of the Spices was, if anything, even bigger than Ethshar of the
Sands. The coastline here was fairly clear-cut and rocky, and the land
comfortably hilly and broken, rather than an eerie dead-flat expanse of sand
jutting out into a maze of sandbars, as the land around Ethshar of the Sands
had been, but once again the city covered at least a league of the shore. And
although no Great Lighthouse towered above everything else, no palace dome
soared to incredible heights, and no towers guarded the harbor, the city was,
in general, built taller than Ethshar of the Sands. There, save for the great
civic structures, nothing had been higher than three stories, at most; here,
four and even five stories were commonplace. Instead of a single immense
lighthouse, there were two smaller ones; instead of harbor towers, Tobas
glimpsed immense guard towers in the city wall; instead of a palace dome, he
saw warehouses, tenements, and shops jammed together in truly unbelievable
numbers. The waterfront in Ethshar of the Sands had been awesome, but almost
two-dimensional; the mere length of it had been daunting. Here the length was
just as great, and the slope of the land allowed him to see depth as well; the