"(ebook) Anthony Piers - Xanth 04 - Centaur Aisle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

"Who wants to know about Xanth?" the table asked. "I'm bored already."

"I know you're a board. I guess Cherie, may a hundred curseburrs tangle
in her tail, wants to know."

"She must be pretty dumb."

Dor considered. "No, she's infernally smart. All centaurs are.

That's why they're the historians and poets and tutors of Xanth. May
all their high-IQ feet founder."

"How come they don't rule Xanth, then?"

"Well, most of them don't do magic, and only a Magician can rule Xanth.
Brains have nothing to do with it-and neither do essays."

Dor scowled at his blank paper.

"Only a Magician can rule any land," the table said smugly. "But what
about you? You're a Magician, aren't you? Why aren't you King?)$

"Well, I will be King, some day," Dor said defensively, aware that he
was talking with the table only to postpone a little longer the
inevitable struggle with the essay. "When King Trent, uh, steps down.
That's why I have to be educated, he says." He wished all kinds of
maledictions on Cherie Centaur, but never on King Trent.

He resumed his morose stare at the paper, where he had now printed THU
LANNED UV ZANTH. Somehow it didn't look right, though he was sure he
had put the TU's in the right places.

Something tittered. Dor glanced up and discovered that the hanging
picture of Queen Iris was smirking. That was one problem about working
in Castle Roogna; he was always under the baleful eye of the Queen,
whose principal business was snooping. With special effort, Dor
refrained from sticking out his tongue at the picture.

Seeing herself observed, the Queen spoke, the mouth of the image moving.
Her talent was illusion, and she could make the illusion of sound when
she wanted to. "You may be a Magician, but you aren't a scholar.
viously spelling is not your forte."

"Never claimed it was," Dor retorted. He did not know what the word
"forte" meant-perhaps it was a kind of small castle-but whatever it
meant, spelling was not there. He did not much like the Queen, and the
feeling was mutual, but both of them were constrained by order of the
King to be reasonably polite to one another.