"Brooks, Terry - Landover 04 - The Tangle Box" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

revelations. No more voices from the distant past. From this moment
on, you listen only to me. Got it?"
The myna sniffed. Horris didn't understand anything, but there
wasn't any point in telling him so. "I hear and obey."
Horris nodded. "Good. Because if it happens again, I will have you
stuffed and mounted."
His wintry gray eyes conveyed the depth of his feelings far more
eloquently than his words, and Biggar's beak clacked shut on the
snappy retort he was about to make.
From far back in the cellar came a rending soundЧthe prying of
nailed wood away from its seating. Horris stared. The faithful were
tearing up the floorboards! The steel door had not deterred them as
completely as he had anticipated. He felt a tightening of his
breathing passages as he hurried not toward the tunnel door but
through the crates and furniture to a series of pictures bolted to
the wall. He reached the fake Degas, touched a pair of studs in the
gilt frame, and released the casing. It swung away on concealed
hinges to reveal a combination safe. Horris worked the dial
feverishly, listening to the sounds of the enraged mob as he did
so, and when he heard the catch release, he swung open the layered
steel door.
He reached inside and withdrew an intricately carved wooden box.
Brooks 15
"Hope springs eternal," he heard Biggar snicker.
Well, it did, he supposedЧat least in this instance. The box was
his greatest treasureЧand he had no idea what it was. He had
conjured it up quite by accident shortly after coming into this
world, one of those fortuitous twists of fate that occur every so
often in the weaving of spells. He had recognized the importance of
the box right from the first. This was a creation of real magic,
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Brooks, Terry - MKL#4 - The Tangle Box
the carvings ancient and spell-laden, rife with secret meaning.
Something was sealed inside, something of great power. The Tangle
Box, he had named it, impressed by the weave of symbols and script
that ringed its surface. It was seamless and lidless, and nothing
he did would release its secrets. Now and again he thought he could
hear something give in its bindings, in the seals that bound it
close about, but conjure though he might the box defied bis best
efforts to uncover what lay within.
Still, it was his best and most important treasure from mis world,
and he was not about to leave it to those cretins who followed.
He tucked the Tangle Box under his arm and hastened on across the
room, weaving through the obstacle course of spare furniture and
worthless literature to reach the tunnel door. There he worked with
a steady hand a second combination dial set close against a lever
that secured the door's heavy locks, heard them release, and shoved
down.
The lever did not budge.
Horris Kew frowned, looking a little like a truant caught oat of