"Peter David - Sir Apropos 03 - Tong Lashing" - читать интересную книгу автора (David Peter)

As I write about my life with the comfortable distance of years between my foolish youth and my
positively imbecilic old age, I have come to realize that not only did I expect our union would be the case,
but I'm disappointed it didn't turn out that way. I think my life would have been much better had it
happened.

I thought Sharee and I would become a couple. I've no idea whether that meant we would have
grown old together, indulged each other's foibles and growing infirmities together. Become progressively
sick of each other and yet remained together out of a sense of mindless devotion, stale affection, or
perhaps simply inertia.

Yes, well... even my nostalgia tends to find itself devolving toward unpleasantries. When presented
with the question of whether a glass is half full or half empty, I instead dwell on why there wasn't enough
liquid available to fill it up in the first place.

Still, Sharee was... quite something. A weatherweaver she was, capable of manipulating weather
threads in a most expert and occasionally lethal fashion. With black hair and flashing gray eyes, Sharee
floated in and out of my life like a butterfly with razor-sharp wings. Our longest separation--up until the
time when she left me prior to this narrative--occurred when I was a victim of a sort of temporary
memory loss and had become a ruthless warlord (or "peacelord" as I called myself) in an unforgiving land
called Wuin. Sharee was one of a group of insurrectionists who sought to put an end to my career
through the expedient means of putting an end to me. This plan ran aground when my invincibility was
revealed to all and sundry, and from that point on, nothing and no one was capable of stopping me.

Except someone did.

I won't go into detail about it at this point, for the tale was already told once, and I see no reason to
cover the gruesome details a second time. Suffice to say that--as is not uncommon in my varied and
sordid adventures--a goodly number of people died, and there was much collateral carnage and
mayhem.

The grisly business concluded, it was a rather odd trio who set across thelandofWuin, hoping to leave
the destruction behind us... along with a devastating talisman of extraordinary chaos. But I wanted
nothing to do with it, despite the fact that it gave me almost limitless power.

I think, in an odd way, that my decision made me more attractive to Sharee. Certainly after the
incident with the gem--the Eye of the Beholder, as it was called--she treated me in a marginally more
kindly fashion. She kept her ready tongue and sharp sense of humor, but when she turned her swordlike
wit upon me, it was to poke gently rather than to stab. Likewise the barbs that I had once hurled at her
were no longer coated with the venom that had used to adorn them.

Plus our new spirit of cooperation might have been aided by the third member of our most unusual
trio.

That third member was a drabit, a small, feathered, dragonlike creature that had taken to me during
my incarnation as a peacelord. The name I'd given him, or perhaps he'd always possessed, was
"Mordant." He didn't speak, naturally, since he was simply a dumb animal, although I would oftentimes
find it disconcerting when he looked at me with a sort of cold, calculating intelligence. At such times, he
had an almost human look to him... except I suspected he was considerably smarter than most humans
I'd encountered in my lifetime. In my dreams he would speak to me, making lacerating observations