"(ebook) Anthony Piers - Xanth 06 - Night Mare" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

Imbri remembered that a brassie had briefly joined the
party of the ogre. "You must be Biyght!" she sent.

"I am Biythe. I changed my name. I envy you, mare; I
wish I could visit dayside again. The light doesn't hurt me,
and some of the people are very nice."

"Yes, they are. If I ever have occasion to bring a brassie
there, it will be you, Biythe," Imbri promised, feeling a
kind of camaraderie with the girl. Perhaps Biythe, too,
wanted to see the rainbow.

Imbri went on to bid farewell to the paper folk and the
ifrits in their bottles and the walking skeletons of the grave-
yard shift and the ghosts of the haunted house. All of them
contributed their special talents to the manufacture of
frightening dreams; it was a community effort.

"Say hello to my friend Jordan," one of the ghosts told
her. "He haunts Castle Roogna now."

Imbri promised to relay the message. She went finally to
mix with her friends, the other mares, with whom she had
worked so closely for so many years. This was the saddest
of her partings.

Now it was time to go. Imbri had used up the day and
grazed the night, preparing for the awful transition. She
did like her work as a bearer of bad dreams, even if she
was no longer good at it. It was exciting to contemplate

going into day, but awful to think of leaving the night. All
her friends were here, not therel

She trotted out toward the rind. No creature could es-
cape the gourd unaided except a night mare. Otherwise
all the bad stuff of dreams would escape and ravage Xanth
uncontrolledЧa natural disaster. So the gourd had to be
limited, a separate world of its own, except for those whose
business it was to deliver its product. Some few people fool-
ish enough to attempt to glimpse its secrets by peeking into
the peephole of a gourd found themselves trapped there for
an indefinite period. If one of their friends interfered with
their gaze at the peephole, then they were freedЧand sel-
dom peeked again. It was always wisest not to peek at
what concerned one not, lest one see what pleased one not.

The Stallion was right: Imbri had lost her touch with the
dreams. She carried them, she delivered themЧbut the
goblin's draft notice had not been her first clumsy effort.