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

he did see held not grains and produce, as he was accustomed to finding in
markets, but rope samples, ironmongery, candles, or other hard goods,
generally of varieties that would be useful aboard ship.
Most of the market, however, was taken up with people clustered about
individuals with no visible goods at all. Some of these stood on boxes or
stools; others made do with the ground.
Curious, Tobas stepped up to the back of one group, composed mostly of
sailors, and listened.
"...further, you need have no fear of passing the Pirate Towns!" the man
was saying, "because we will have aboard not one, but two magicians of the
first order, the incomparable Kolgar of Voider, wizard, and Artalda the Fair,
warlock! Either one of these mighty enchanters can easily defend the ship
against the best the pirates can throw against us, and they will be sleeping
in alternate shifts, so that at no time can our vessel be caught by surprise!
A minimum of risk for a maximum of gain, all the wealth of Tintallion there
for the taking! Who among you will sign aboard the Crimson Star for this
voyage?"
"Where's her old crew?" one aging sailor demanded.
"Ah, my friend," the recruiter replied, "you haven't been listening! The
Crimson Star is a new vessel, fresh from the shipyards!" He waved a hand
toward the west, which Tobas assumed to be the direction wherein lay the
shipyards. "Who will sign?"
The old sailor turned away and saw Tobas at the outside of the crowd.
"Don't listen to him, lad," he said. "Tintallion's a cold and miserable place
and no richer than we are here." He stalked off.
Tobas had had no intention of signing up for a journey to Tintallion; he,
too, turned away, but only to move on to the next group.
That group was listening to a similar harangue; this recruiter claimed he
needed only three skilled sailors to replace men lost in a storm. The third
was different, a soldier in a yellow tunic and red kilt was announcing, in a
loud but bored and monotonous voice, various recent decisions of the city's
overlord, Azrad VII, that would affect the shipping industry.
The fourth group centered around a young woman in a flowing gown of white
velvet, the hem spattered with mud; her hair was bound up in a manner Tobas
had never seen before, held in place with jeweled clasps. She claimed to be a
princess, apparently, and sought brave young men to restore her to her
rightful inheritance in some place called Mezgalon, whence she had been driven
by treachery and violence. Tobas stared in fascination; he had never seen a
princess before. Her story sounded much like some of the more lurid tales he
and Peretta had heard as children at her mother's knee; he found it hard to
take the woman seriously.
For one thing, quite aside from the difference he had always assumed to
exist between fiction and reality, this princess did not quite fit the mental
image he had always had of princesses; despite her finery, she was plain-faced
and flat-chested, with an unpleasantly nasal voice and a singularly ugly
accent. Some of the whores on the waterfront had looked more like the
traditional storytellers' description of a princess.
Well, Tobas told himself, not all princesses can be beautiful, can they?
It seemed very odd to be in a place where anyone could even claim to be a
princess; he wondered if perhaps some of the old stories he had taken for mere