"Diane Duane - Feline Wizards 2 - Majesty's Wizardly Service" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

Diane Duane [Feline Wizards 02] On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service

ON HER MAJESTY'S WIZARDLY SERVICE
also published as To Visit the Queen

by Diane Duane

Feline Wizards: Volume 2

[03 oct 2002 -- scanned and proofed for #bookz]

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?

I've been to London to look at the Queen.

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?

I frightened a little mouse under her chair.

-- Children's rhyme

In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the
Art which is Its gift in Life's service alone. I will guard growth
and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in
its own way: nor will I change any creature unless its growth and
life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To
these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will ever put aside fear for
courage, and death for life, when it is fitting to do so -- looking
always toward the Heart of Time, where all our sundered times are
one, and all our myriad worlds lie whole, in That from Which they
proceeded ...

-- the Wizard's Oath, species-nonspecific recension



PROLOGUE

Patel went slowly up the gray concrete stairs to the elevated
Docklands Light Railway station at Island Gardens; he took them one
at a time, rather than two or three at once as he usually did.
Nothing was wrong with him: it was morning, he felt energetic enough
-- a good breakfast inside him, everything OK at home, the weather
steady enough, cool and gray but not raining. However, the package he
was carrying was heavy enough to pull a prizefighter's arms out of
their sockets.

He had made the mistake of putting the book in a plastic shopping bag
from the superstore down the street. Now the thing's sharp corners
were punching through the bag, and the bag's handles, such as they