"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 6 - The Spell of the Black Dagger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

she had gone in hopes of picking up a few valuables, she had thought of the
house as being on Grand Street, and had forgotten that it was also on another
major thoroughfare—Wizard Street. Ordinary people didn't antagonize magicians;
that was very probably why there weren't better locks and other safeguards.
Shops and houses on Wizard Street didn't need them.

She would never have broken in if she had known—but now that she was inside,
she just had to see more.

There was light coming from beneath that door—not very much, just a little—and
she wanted to see what was causing it. Very slowly, very carefully, very
silently, she knelt and lowered her eye to the crack.

Behind the door were stairs going down, stone stairs between gray stone walls.
She blinked and looked again.

Stairs going down?

Most buildings in Ethshar of the Sands did not have cellars; the sands on
which the city was built, and for which it was named, made digging difficult.
Excavations had a tendency to fall in on themselves. That was also why
structures were almost never more than three stories in height: anything
taller than that tended to sink or fall over. Some people had cellars dug for
cold storage—root cellars, wine cellars, and the like—but such extravagances
were generally small, and reached by ladders rather than by stairs.

Tabaea had heard about cellars and basements all her life, in tales of faraway
places, but had never been in one, unless you counted crawlspaces or the gaps
between pilings. The whole idea of cellars tended to put her in mind of the
overlord's dungeons—she had heard about those all her life, too, or at any
rate as long as she could remember—and of secrets and exotic places. She
stared at the stone step and wished she could see more; from her vantage point
at floor level she could see the iron rail, the walls, the sloping roof, but
nothing below the topmost stair.

However, she could, she realized abruptly, hear something.

She held her breath and listened intently, trying to ignore her own heartbeat.
An older man's voice, speaJdng quietly and intently—she couldn't make out the
words.

Could it be the wizard in whose workshop she was?

Of course; who else would it be?

Could he be working a spell? Was that an incantation she heard, the invocation
of some spirit, the summoning of some supernatural being? She could only hear
the one person, no answering voice, but he seemed to be addressing someone,
not just muttering to himself.