"Anthony, Piers - Incarnations 04 - Wielding A Red Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

stroked his chin. "The Mime. No, Mym. Mym the Mime!
You've got a talent, boy. Wish I'd known before."

And so he joined the paid performers, leaving the
dragon dung behind. "I had no idea!" Orb told him
warmly. "You are a very talented person, Mym."

It was merely coordination and training, he informed
her, as much by gesture as by words, for he did not like
to embarrass them both by constant stammering. Orb was
always understanding, but still it represented an imposi-
tion, and the last thing he wanted to do was burden a
woman as lovely, inside and out, as she.

But her interest in him had been aroused, and his as-
cension to performer status brought them into closer nat-
ural association. Though the group was castelessЧwhich
made it technically PariahЧit did have its own type of
stratification, with the master at the top, the performers

Piers Anthony 7

next, and the menials at the bottom. Orb, as the main
attraction, was second only to the master in importanceЧ
but as Mym refined his act and the flow of rupees in-
creased, his status ascended correspondingly. At first the
others had been condescending or diffident, because of
his speech impediment and his inexperience, but no one
laughed at him, because all were outcasts in their own
fashions. The mahout who tended the lead elephant had
a clubfoot, and the dragon-trainer was an alcoholicЧthe
dragon liked the smell of alcoholЧand the cook was so
grossly fat that he expected in due course to assume per-
former status as a freak. None of them were inclined to
laugh at something as minor as stuttering.

In fact, Mym discovered that the group was a kind of
family; it looked out for its own, and he had become a
part of it. This became clear one day when they were
setting up for a show in a village not far south of Ah-
madabad, the giant capital ofGujarat. He was helping the
exotic dancer, Pythia, prepare for her act. She had to strip
and spread a special protective grease over all her body,
so that the digestive acids of the python would not damage
her skin. She had a magic pill she would gulp just before
the snake swallowed her head that enabled her to stop
breathing for twenty minutes or so; that and the salve
enabled her to perform her act once each day. But the
girl who normally helped her and who reached into the
python's open mouth to haul her out by the feet when the