"(ebook) Anthony Piers - Xanth 03 - Castle Roogna" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

the experience and fortitude to use it properly. I would be remiss if I did not arrange to provide you with that experience."

"ButЧ"

"No Magician should require the services of an ogre to enforce his authority. You have not yet been hardened to the occasional nithlessness required."

"UhЧ" Dor knew his face was crimson. He had just received a potent rebuke, and knew it was justified. For a Magician to give way to the likes of Horse-jawЧ

"I believe you need a mission, Dor. A man's quest. One whose completion will demonstrate your competence for the office you are coming to."

This had taken an entirely different tack than Dor had anticipated. It was as if the King had made his decision and summoned Dor for this directive, rather than merely granting an audience. "IЧmaybe so." Maybe so? For certain so!

"You hold Millie in respect," the King said. "But you are aware that she is not of your generation, and has one great unmet need."

"Jonathan," Dor said. "SheЧshe loves Jonathan the zombie!" He was almost indignant.

"Then I think the nicest thing anyone could do for her would be to discover a way to restore Jonathan to full life. Then, perhaps, the reason she loves him would become apparent"

"ButЧ" Dor had to halt. He knew that Grundy's remarks were only the least of the ridicule that would be directed at him if he ever expressed any serious ideas of his own about Millie. She was an eight-hundred-year-old woman; he was just a boy. On? way to stifle all speculation would be to give her what she most wanted: Jonathan, alive. "But howЧ?"

The King spread his hands. "I do not know the answer, Dor. But there may be one who does."

There was only one person hi the Land of Xanth who knew all the answers: the Good Magician Hum-frey. But he was a sour old man who charged a year's service for each Answer. Only a person of considerable determination and fortitude went to consult Good Magician Humfrey.

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U Suddenly Dor realized the nature of the challenge |png Trent had laid down for him. First, he would jive to leave these familiar environs and trek through the hazardous wilderness to the Good Magician's cas-tJe. Then he would have to force his way in to brace tfce Magician. Then serve his year for the Answer. Then use the Answer to restore Jonathan to lifeЧ Snowing that in so doing, he was abolishing any chance that Millie would everЧ

His mind balked. This was no quest; this was disaster!

"Ordinary citizens have only themselves to be concerned about," Trent said. "A ruler must be concerned for the welfare of others as much as for himself. He must be prepared to make sacrificesЧsometimes very personal ones. He may even have to lose the woman he loves, and marry the one he doesn't loveЧfor the good ol the realm."

Give up Millie, marry Irene? Dor rebelledЧthen realized that the King had not been talking about Dor, but about himself. Trent had lost his wife and child in Mundania, and then married the Sorceress Iris, whom he never professed to love, and had a child by herЧfor the good of the realm. Trent asked nothing of any citizen he would not ask of himself.

"I will never be the man you are,*' Dor said humbly.

The King rose, clapping him on the back so that Grundy almost fell off his shoulder. Trent might be old, but he was still strong. "/ was never the man I am," he said. "A man is only the man he seems to be. Inside, where no one sees, he may be a mass of gnawing worms of doubt and ire and grief." He paused reflectively as he showed Dor firmly to the doorway. "No challenge is easy. The measure of the challenge a man rises to at need is the measure of the man. I proffer you a challenge for a Magician and a King."

Dor found himself standing hi the hall, still be-mused. Even Grundy was silent

i> Good Magician Humfrey*s castle was east of Castle Roogna, not far as the dragon flew, but more than a

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day's journey through the treacherous wilderness for a boy on foot. There was no enchanted path to Hum-frey's retreat, because the Magician abhorred company; all paths led away only. Dor could not be sent there instantly by spell, because this was his quest, his private personal challenge, to accomplish by himself.

Dor started in the morning, using his talent to solve part of the problem of travel. "Stones, give me a warning whistle whenever I approach anything dangerous to me, and let me know the best route to the Good Magician's castle."

"We can tell you what is dangerous," the rocks chorused. There were no stony silences for him I "But we don't know where the Good Magician's castle is. He has strewn little forget-spells all over."