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

"Yeah? Well the plaque's a dumdum."

"Plaque, my friend says you're aЧ-"

"I am not!" the plaque retorted angrily. "He's the dumdum." What feelings objects had tended to be superficial. "He doesn't have my secret."

"What secret, dodo?" Grundy demanded, his voice even more heavily freighted with sneer than before.

"My secret chamber, that's what! He doesn't have that, does he?"

"Nobody has that," Grundy cried, scowling. "You're just making that up so we won't think you're the gran-itehead you really are!"

"Is that so? Well look at that, duh!" And the face of the plaque swung open to reveal an interior chamber. Inside was a small box.

Dor reached in and snatched out the box before the plaque caught on to its mistake. "And what have we here?" he inquired gleefully.

"Gimme that back!" the plaque cried. "It's mine, all mine!"

Dor studied the box. On the top was a button marked with the words DON'T PUSH. He pushed it.

The lid sprang up. A snakelike thing leaped out, startling Dor, who dropped the box. "HA, HA, HA, HA, HA!" it bellowed.

The snake-thing landed on the ground, its energy spent. "Jack, at your service," it said. "Jack in the box. You sure look foolish."

"A golem," Grundy said. "I should have known. Golems are insufferable."

"You oughta know, pinhead," Jack retorted. He reached into a serpentine pocket and drew out a shiny disk. "Here is an achievement button to commemorate the occasion." He held it up.

Dor reached down and took the button. It had two faces. On one side it said TRESPASSER. On the other it said PERSECUTED.

Dor had to laugh, ruefully. "I guess I fell for it! That's what I get for seeking the easy way through."

He put the button against his shirt, where it stuck

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magically, PERSECUTED side out. Then he picked up the Jack, put him back in the box, closed the lid, set the works back inside the plaque's chamber, and closed that, "Well played, plaque," he said. "Yeah," the plaque agreed, mollified. They returned their attention to the moat. "No substitute for my own ingenuity," Dor said. "But this diversion has given me a notion. If we can be tricked by a decoyЧ**

"I don't see what you're up to," Grundy said. "That triton knows his target."

"That triton thinks he knows his target. Watch this." And Dor squatted by the water and said to it: "I shall make a wager with you, water. I bet that you can't imitate my voice."

"Yeah?" the water replied, sounding just like Dor. "Hey, that's pretty good, for a beginner. But you can't do it in more than one place at a time."

**That*s what you thinkl" the water said in Dor's voice from two places.

"You're much better than I thought!" Dor confessed ruefully. "But the real challenge is to do it so well that a third party could not tell which is me and which is you. I'm sure you couldn't fool that triton, for example."

"That wetback?" the water demanded. "What do you want to bet, sucker?"