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

"Uh huh."

"Uh huh what?"

"Uh huh, I got it."

"Right. So let's start in again from the top."

Rhiow sighed and licked her nose as the small black-and-white cat sat
up on his haunches again and thrust his forepaws into the faintly
glowing warp and woof of the worldgate's control matrix, and muttered
under his breath, very softly, "It still licks butt."

WHAM!

Rhiow closed her eyes and wondered where she and Urruah would ever
find enough patience for this job. Inside her, some annoyed part of
her mind was mocking the Meditation. I will meet the terminally
clueless today, it said piously: idiots, and those with hairballs for
brains, and those whose ears need a good shredding before you can
even get their attention. I do not have to be like them, even though
I would dearly love to hit them hard enough to make the empty places
in their heads echo ...

She turned away from that line of thought in mild annoyance at
herself as Arhu picked himself up off the platform one more time.
This late on in this life, Rhiow had not anticipated being thrust
into the role of nursing-dam for a youngster barely finished losing
his milk teeth ... and certainly not into the role of the trainer of
a new-made wizard. She had gained her own wizardry in a different
paradigm -- acquiring it solo, and not becoming part of a team until
she had proven herself expert enough to survive past the first flush
of power. Arhu, though, had broken the rules, coming to them halfway
through his Ordeal and dragging them all through it with him. He was
still breaking every rule he could find, having apparently decided
that since the tactic worked once, it would probably keep on working.

Urruah, however, was slowly breaking him of this idea ... though
getting anything through that resilient young skull was plainly going
to take a while. Urruah, too, was playing out of role. Here he was,
the very emblem of hardy individuality and independence, a big
muscular broad-striped torn, all balls and swagger, wearing the
cachet of his few well-placed scars with an insouciant, good-natured
air -- but now he leaned over the kitten-becoming-cat which the
Powers had wished upon them, and acted very much the hard-pawed
pride-father. It was a job to which Urruah had taken with entirely
too much relish, Rhiow thought privately, and she was at pains never
to mention to him how much he seemed to be enjoying the
responsibility. Does he see himself in this youngster, Rhiow thought,
... does he see the wizard he might have been if he'd had this kind