"04 - The Wizardry Consulted (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Rick)

"Excuse me, My Lord." The castle seneschal was calm, dignified and more
than a little bit stuffy. "But . . ."

Before he could finish the door banged open again and two children and a
dragon charged into the room.

"UncaWiz, UncaWiz," shouted Caitlin, the daughter of one of the guardsmen.
She was a couple of years older than Danny's son Ian, with dark curly
hair, flashing dark eyes and a single black eyebrow stark against her
pale, fair skin. She was utterly charming, she knew it and she used it
shamelessly.

Right on her heels came Ian. He was barely three and well into the
head-down-and-charge stage of childhood locomotion. Without pausing he ran
full-tilt across the room and bounced into Danny's lap.

But the real attraction was the third member of the group, who charged
into the room just as heedlessly, got his feet tangled up with the rug and
his own tail, caromed off a pile of manuscripts and executed a neat bank
shot to end up beside Ian and Danny.

Little Red Dragon, or LRD to the programmers, was little only in
comparison to the eighty-foot cavalry mounts in the aeries below the
castle. He-Wiz thought he was a he-was nearly ten feet long from snout to
tail tip. His scales were darkening from scarlet to maroon and the blue
edges were going from turquoise toward navy and his combination of
exuberance, dragonish temper and size was making him increasingly hard to
handle. Dragons do not become intelligent until they are nearly full
grown. LRD was a long way from full grown and somewhat further than that
from intelligent. But LRD and Ian were inseparable, so the dragon was
allowed in the programmers' workroom and their quarters in the Wizard's
Keep.

The seneschal knew when he was outclassed. With an exquisite sigh of
resignation he stepped away from the door to await the wizards' pleasure.

"The dragon's got a new name!" Caitlin announced. "We had to come tell you
because you can't call him LRD any more."

"Not LRD?" asked Danny, looking down at his son squirming in his lap.

"No! Fuf-fee," Ian pronounced distinctly, reaching up and hugging the
scaly monster's neck. LRD looked pleased.

"I beg your pardon?" Wiz said.

"He means Fluffy," Caitlin said with five-year-old superiority.

"Fluffy!" Ian repeated with three-year-old emphasis.