"John DeChancie - Castle 08 - Bride of the Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dechancie John)

yellow-andpurple running shoes. He bundled up the robes and tossed them at Tremaine. The crown went
a second later.
"Whoa!" Tremaine said, dropping the robes to catch the electrum crown. "Sire, please be careful!"
The king went to a wall and cast another spell, and in no time an opening, in the form of an arched
doorway, appeared in what had been an expanse of bare stone. Beyond stood tall trees, green grass
spreading from their bases.
"Look, I'm out of here. My duplicate will handle things. His signature is as good as mine."
"Sire, do you really think you ought to?"
"Tremaine, indulge me in this."
"Very well, sire."
"Good. I going out for my usual afternoon run, which I've skipped for the past thirty-one years, and then
I have a bachelor party to show up at. See you later."
Incarnadine, Lord of the Western Pale and King of the Realms Perilous, walked through the arch. After
giving a look around, he broke into a run and was off into dappled sunlight.
Tremaine sighed. He took up a sheaf of papers from the desk.
"And now, sire, I bring up the issue of pay raises for the staff."
The royal stand-in nodded emphatically. "It's about time the staff had a raise."
"But, sire, they are cost-of-living escalators that you yourself authorized-" Tremaine did a take. "Pardon,
sire. Did you just say-?"
The doors banged open.
"Oh, dear," Tremaine said.
"And this, gentlefolk, is the Royal Office itself!" Heads poked in and necks craned.
"It's the king!"
"The king is here!"
His Serene and Transcendent Majesty rose from his oaken desk and strode toward the door, smiling,
arms out and open.
"Welcome, welcome! Come right in, good my lords and ladies!"
"Now, this has possibilities," Tremaine mused to himself.
? Chapter Two

HIS NAME WAS RANCE OF CORCINDOR and he robbed graves for a living. Times were difficult.
He was hard up for a grave.
He came down from the mountains above Garlanis into the foothills of Midresh, through which a mighty
river raced and crashed as it followed a winding course ever downward, tumbling over cataract and
rapids until it spilled into the Valley of Goan and the marshy plains of Veklin, there to swell wide and
slow to a lazy crawl and flow past the fertile fields of Gan, the grassy knolls of Tabor and the dusty flats
of Vilben. Farther along the river narrowed and rushed again at the foot of the cliffs of Heeth. Then,
finally, it slowed and widened once more to flow gently by a huge boulder called, for some reason,
Weird Larry.
But he didn't go there.
He came down from the mountains and went the other way, descending into rough land, black rocks
breaking up through blacker earth. The air hung thick and fetid, palpable, cloying. Dark clouds hovered.
Stale odors seeped from every crack and chasm. This was not a nice place.
He eased his mount to a halt and surveyed. A gnarled scrub forest to the east; a gradual flattening to the
west. The sun boiled behind thick clouds on the horizon. Ruins to the south and east. To the west also. In
fact, nothing but ruins lay about. This was ancient Zin; the Zinites had built much, and much remained of
their handiwork, crumbled and weathered though it was. But the stench of death and decay lay over the
land, a pall of oppressive misery and despair hung over all.
"Gods," Rance said. "This is depressing."
Grand edifices these ruins once had been temples, palaces, courtyards, and squares; all now were heaps