"Elgin,.Suzette.Haden.-.Ozark.-.01.-.Twelve.Fair.Kingdoms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

CHAPTER 1CHAPTER 1

I SHOULD HAVB known that something was very wrong when
the Mules started flying erratically. I was misled a bit, I
suppose, because there were no actual crashes, just upset
stomachs. The ordinary person on the street blamed it on
turbulence; and considering what they understood of the way
me system worked, that was as reasonable a conclusion as any
other However, I had full access to classified material, and I
knew perfectly well that it was magic, not aerodynamics, that
kept the Mules flying. And magic at the level of skill necessary
to fly a bulky creature like a Mule was not likely to suffer any
because of a little disturbance in the air You take a look at a
Mule sometime; it surely isn't built for flight.

Even someone who's gone no farther in magic than Common
Sense Level knows that the harmony of the universe is a
mighty frail and delicately balanced equilibrium, and that you
can't go tampering with any part of it without affecting
everything else. A child knows that. So that when whatever-it-
was started, with its first symptoms being Mules that made
their riders throw up, I should of known that something sturdy
was tugging hard at the Universal Web.

2 SUZETIE HADEN ELGIN

I was busy, let's grant me that. I was occupied with the
upcoming Grand Jubilee of the Confederation of Continents.
Any meeting that it doesn't happen but once every five hundred
yearsЧyou tend to pay it considerable attention. One of our
freighters had had engine trouble off the coast of Oklahomah,
and that was interfering with our supply deliveries, I was trying
to run a sizable Castle with a staff that bordered, that spring, on
the mediocre, and trying to find fit replacements before the big
to-do. And there were three Grannys taken to their beds in my
kingdom, afflicted with what they claimed was epizootics and
what I knew was congenital cantankerousness, and that was
disrupting the regular conduct of everyday affairs more than
was convenient.

So ... faced with a lot of little crises and one on the way
to being a big one, what did I do?

Well, I went to some meetings. I went to half a dozen. I
fussed at the Castle staff, and I managed to get me in an
Economist who showed some promise of being able to make
the rest of them shape up. I hired a new Fiddler, and I bought a
whole team of speckledy Mules that I'd had my eye on for a
while. I visited the "ailing" Grannys, with a box of hard candy
for each, and paid them elaborate compliments that they saw