"Clayton Emery - Card Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emery Clayton)

whanged the fingers, cracking the ice, and freed the card. A crude drawing
in charcoal showed a round shape with a bite in one side. He slipped the
card into his quilted doublet, vaguely wondering if Rayner had completed
the spell. He should have, considering it cost his life. There were more
cards scattered on the table: they might be finished or barely started.
Byron grabbed them all and dropped them down his shirt.

Grimacing, the apprentice whapped the candlestick against Rayner's
chest, fractured the ice sheath. Groping dead, cold flesh, Byron tugged out
a key on a silver chain, snapped it loose. He slotted the key into a
disguised knothole in the tabletop. Twisting, he felt a click, then pried up
a board. Inside a secret drawer, handy to the master's hand, were more
loose cards and a velvet pouch. He took them all. The pouch had the
chunky satisfying feel of many cards inside, the master's hoard. It was
Byron's only pay for three years of diligence, for Rayner hadn't believed in
"spoiling" an apprentice with wages.

Congratulating himself, Byron ran for the door. He grabbed the brass
handle and yelped. The door panels smoked, the paint curling. Wrapping
his sleeve around his hand, he yanked the door open and almost scorched
his eyeballs. The hall was a sheet of flame.

His time had run out.

Fighting panic, Byron fought to think of an escape. No way except the
walls themselves. They'd have to do.

Circling the room like a madman, patting the walls above the crowded
tables, he found the coolest spot facing the side of the house. Once, moving
a table, he'd dented the wall and gotten a smack on the ear, been made to
repair it. The walls were plaster mixed with horsehair over wooden lathes.
Now Byron yanked the table aside, swept the shelves to send crocks and
jars smashing, grabbed a big hammer from a worktable and, with
desperate strength, pounded on the wall. Plaster crumbled, old wooden
lathes snapped. A few more blows and he was smashing the opposite
lathes. More plaster cracked and he saw the hall. Knuckles dinged and
bleeding, his clothes white, nose filled with plaster dust, he bashed a hole
big enough, dropped the hammer and wriggled through, tearing his cape
in the process.
 The hallway was hot and polluted as a furnace. Smoke roiled in clouds
around the corners, sucked through the hole towards the fresh air in the
workshop. Both halls burned, leaving Byron a single wall to escape
through.

Solid brick.

Hissing, coughing, cursing, he wrenched Rayner's velvet pouch from his
shirt, tore it open. Colorful pasteboard cards spilled on the carpet, some
large as book covers, some small and square, a few round as big coins.
Frantically Byron shuffled. Rayner had one special card he made often.