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

" 'Cause women can't assume the throne, golem! But if I were a manЧ"

"If you were a man, you still wouldn't be King, because you don't have Magician-caliber magic."

"I do too!" she flared.

"Stinkfinger?" Grundy inquired derisively.

'That's green thumb!" she yelled, furious. "I can make any plant grow. Fast. Big. Healthy."

Dor had stayed out of the argument, but fairness required his interjection. "That's creditable magic."

"Stay out of this, dodo!" she snapped. "What do you know about it?"

Dor spread his hands. How did he get into arguments he was trying to avoid? "Nothing. I can't grow a thing."

"You will when you're a man," Grundy muttered.

Irene remained angry. "So how come they call you a Magician, while I am onlyЧ"

"A spoiled brat," Grundy finished for her.

Irene burst into tears. She was a rather pretty child, with green eyes and a greenish tinge to her hair to match her talent, but her thumbs were normal flesh color. She was a girl, and a year younger than Dor, so she could cry if she wanted to. But it bothered him. He wanted to get along with her, and somehow had never been able to. "I hate you!" she screeched at him.

Genuinely baffled, Dor could only inquire: "Why?"

"Because you're going to be K-King! And if I want to be Q-Queen, I'll have toЧtoЧ"

"To marry him," Grundy said. "You really should learn to finish your own sentences."

"Ugh!" she cried, and it sounded as if she really were about to throw up. She looked wildly about, and spotted a tiny plant at the fringe of the pavilion. "Grow!" she yelled at it, pointing.

The plant, responsive to her talent, grew. It was a

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shadowboxer, with little boxing gloves mounted on springy tendrils. The gloves clenched and struck at the shadows formed by distant lightning. Soon the boxer was several feet high, and the gloves were the size of human fists. They struck at the vague shadows of the pavilion's interior. Dor backed away, knowing the blows had force.

Attracted by his motion, and by the sharper shadow his body made, the plant leaned toward him. The gloves were now larger than human fists, and mounted on vines as thick as human wrists. There were a dozen of them, several striking while several more recoiled for the next strike, keeping the plant as a whole hi balance. Irene watched, a small gloat playing about her mouth.

"How did I get into this?" Dor asked, disgruntled. He didn't want to flee the pavilion; the storm had intensified and yellow rain was cascading off the roof. The booming of its fusillade was unnerving; there were too many hailstones mixed in, and it looked suspiciously like a suitable habitat for tornado wraiths.

"Well, I don't know for sure," the pavilion answered. "But once I overheard the Queen talking with a ghost, as they took shelter from a small shower, and she said Bink always had been an annoyance to her, and now Bink's son was an annoyance to her daughter. She said she'd do something about it, if it weren't for the King."

"But I never did anything to them!" Dor protested.

"Yes you did," Grundy said. tгYou were born a full Magician. They can't stand that."

Now the boxing gloves had him boxed in, backed to the very edge of the pavilion. "How do I get out of this?"