"Chalker, Jack L - Demons of the Dancing GodsUC - #2DG" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

He approached a low building separated from the castle

proper and knocked at the wooden door. It opened, revealing
a tall, sinister-looking elf whose thin-lined face, penetrating
eyes in perpetual scowl, and cold manner were in stark contrast
to the small, happy groundskeepers always working on the
castle itself. This was a warrior elf, an Imir, a professional

soldier and deadly fighter.

"Hello, Poquah," the big man said cheerily. "Is he in?"
"Downstairs, working on cataloguing his sculpture collec-
tion," the Imir responded. "Come inЧthe lady is already wait-
ing inside. You can go down together."

Joe entered, having to bend his head slightly to clear the
door, and looked around the familiar study of the sorcerer
Ruddy gore, its sumptuous furnishings complementing the walls
of red-bound volumes that seemed to go on foreverЧthe Books
of Rules, which governed this entire crazy world and were

constantly being amended.

Marge was standing there, just looking at the huge books
as she always did, probably wishing she could read them.
Although the trading language they now used routinely as a
first language bore an amazing resemblance to English, at least
in many of the nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, its written form
was pictographic, like the Chinese of their old world, with over
forty thousand characters representing words and ideas rather
than letters. It took an exceptional mind to learn it, starting
from childhood. Total literacy meant power and position, no
matter from what origins one came; but there was far too little
time to leam it, once one was an adult.

She looked around as he entered and gave him a mild wave,

then turned back to the books. "You know," she said, "they
still remind me of the U.S. Tax Code. Thousands of years of
petty, sorcerous minds constantly making Rules on just about
everything they can think of. And every time there's a Council
meeting, there's another volume of additions, deletions, and
revisions. I bet nobody knows or understands it all, not even
Ruddy gore."

He just nodded and shrugged. The whole world was nuts,
but people still acted like people, and that meant nutty, too.
He'd long since stopped being amazed at much of anything in
this world and just accepted whatever came. "So how are you
doing?" he asked her, trying to start a more normal conver-