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

"Stop, Grundy!" Dor cried, laughing. "I believe in magic, as any sensible person does, but I'm not a fool! Stars wouldn't float in water. They would fizzle out in seconds!"

"Maybe they did. I was riding a flying fish at the s, so I couldn't see them too well. But it was some storm!"

;Х-.*Х There was a shudder in the ground, not thunder. ^Por halted, alarmed. "What is that?"

"Sounds like the tramp of a giant, to me," Grundy jzarded. His talent was translation, and he could in-erpret anything any creature said, but footfalls weren't nguage. "Or worse. It just might beЧ"

Suddenly it loomed from the gloom. "An ogre!" Dor

11

finished, terrified. "Right on the path! How could the enchantment have failed? We're supposed to be safe on theseЧ"

The ogre tramped on toward them, a towering hulk more than twice Dor's height and broad in proportion. Its great gap-toothed mouth cracked open horren-dously. An awful growl blasted out like the breath of a hungry dragon.

**What say, lil manЧwill you give me a nan*?** Grundy said.

"What?" Dor asked, startled almost out of his fright.

'That's what the ogre says; I was translating."

Oh. Of course. "No! I need my hands! He can't eat them." Though he was uncertain how the ogre could be stopped from eating anything he wanted. Ogres were great bone-crunchers.

The ogre growled again. "Me not eat whelp; me seek for help," Grundy said. Then the golem did a double take. "Crunch!" he cried. "The vegetarian ogre!"

"Then why does he want to eat my hand?" Dor demanded.

The monster smiled. The expression most resembled the opening of a volcanic fissure. Gassy breath hissed out "You little loudmouthed twerp, hardly bigger than a burp."

"That's me!" Grundy agreed, answering his own translation. "Good to see you again, Crunchl How's the little lady, she with hair like nettles and skin like mush, whose face would make a zombie blush?"

"She lovely as ever; me forsake she never," the ogre replied. Dor was beginning to be able to make out the words directly; the thing was speaking his language, but with a foul accent that nearly obliterated meaning. "We have good bash, make little Smash."

Dor was by this time reassured that the spell of the path had not failed. This ogre was harmlessЧwell, no ogre was harmless, but at least not raveningЧand therefore able to mix with men. "A little smash?"

"Smash baby ogre, "bout like you; now he gone and we too few."

"You smashed your baby?" Dor asked horrified,

12

Maybe there was something wrong with the path-spell after all.

"Dodo! Smash is the name of their baby," Grundy explained. "All the ogres have descriptive names."

"Then why is Smash gone?" Dor demanded nervously. "Troll wives eat their husbands, so maybe ogres eatЧ"

"Smash wandered away in drizzle; now we search for he fizzle."