"Cross CHILDREN Walk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

As many an equally thick soul before him, Mayor Eyebright had decided that silence meant surrender. He did not know his daughter well at all.


To anyone else it was a nasty, huge, stinking, half-eaten corpse of draco aquaticus, or the common water-dragon. To Master Porfirio it was a welcome diversion from his own dark thoughts. He had discovered the body quite by accident, as he wandered aimlessly downstream along the riverbank, kicking at clumps of reeds and muttering many curses against the faculty of Overford Academy. No one was more surprised than he when he came eye-to-empty-socket with the deceased monster, despite the fact that the fumes of its dissolution were strong enough to peel the paint from passing rivercraft. Like most wizards, Master Porfirio had destroyed his sense of smell over the course of hundreds of alchemical experiments gone awry.

There was nothing wrong with his sense of sight, however. "So that's what became of you!" he exclaimed, scrutinizing the sad remains.

There was nothing apparently extraordinary about the body. Like others of its kind, the late water-dragon of the Iron River consisted of a disproportionately large, horse-like head attached to a long, sinuous, finned body. It was not an attractive creature, barring the scales which were the shimmery green of summer leaves. Master Porfirio tugged one loose with surprising ease and scrutinized it closely.

"Not even a hint of silvering," he told the corpse. "You were a very young monster. Whatever you died of, it wasn't age."

He tucked the telltale scale into his pocket and ambled along that portion of the body which did not trail off into the river. "Incredible," he said, noting the way in which the soil had been churned up around the creature's corpse. "You beached yourself before you died, and it looks like you were in a lot of pain. But pain from what? There's the question."

He paced up and down one side of the body, then leaped over the beast's back to check the other. It no longer seemed to matter to him that he was unemployed and as badly beached as the dead dragon, with only a few coins in his purse and no letter of recommendation for a new position. A dedicated scholar, Master Porfirio was easily distracted from his own troubles when confronted with an intriguing mental puzzle such as this.

"Not a mark on you. Nothing except for these old scars the crossing guard gave you, and that was over two years ago. I guess she scared you, too. Gnut knows, she scares everybody. Loud sort of female, I think her daughter Lily studied Advanced Alchemy with old Master Caromar before he died and Dean Thrumble gave his own idiot son the post. Over me. As if that incapable clod could complete even one experiment without botching it horribly! At least I know better than to dump my mistakes in the river. I don't care if it did get me fired, I'm glad I took a stand against him at the faculty meeting! Someone had to."

The burden of bitterness on his soul elbowed out Master Porfirio's scholastic interest in deducing the water-dragon's doom. Taken up by his own words, he leaned against the creature's flank and relieved his spirit to an audience of one, and that one dead. "I suppose that when that moron graduates to blowing up parts of the school, someone else might object to his inept antics, but I doubt it. Not with my fate such a fresh example of the price one pays for truth-telling. Bah!"

In his wrath, Master Porifirio brought his fist down hard on the water-dragon's back. To his shock, the scales crumbled on impact and his hand sank up to the wrist in deliquescing flesh. Uttering an exclamation of disgust, he shook off most of the goo and hastened to wash the rest away in the river.

"How very odd," he murmured as he knelt by the water, scubbing his hand. "Dragon scales are the hardest substance known, resistant to all save the keenest blades, and then only when wielded by expert hands. Perhaps they turn brittle when the beast dies? Hmm, no, if that were so, there wouldn't be a waiting list seven leagues long of king's guardsmen ready to pay top price for dragon-scale armor, to say nothing of the ban on selling it toЧouch!"

The disemployed mage yanked his hand out of the river and stared at it. The skin, once the pasty hue favored by pedagogues everywhere, now looked as dark as if its owner had soaked it in walnut juice. It had also developed a number of ugly boils of a size not seen this side of a troll's rump. His other hand, however, retained its original aspect. His glance darted from one to the other with a growing expression of bafflement and dismay.

Master Porfirio was no slowcoach. On the great chalkboard of his brain an alarmingly simple equation was rapidly being posted and solved. He looked from his hands to the dead water-dragon to the water, then upriver, to where the thatched roofs of Overford Academy and its attendant town bided in unsuspecting peace.

"Oh dear," he said. "I suppose I should go back and inform the authorities. I'm sure they'll do the right thing."


Ethelberthina Eyebright was on her way to school when she happened across the battered body of her former alchemy teacher in the alley behind the Crusty Boar. "Goodness," she told the corpse. "When Dean Thrumble terminates someone, he doesn't fool around."

She was about to continue on her way when the corpse groaned and rolled over, sending a pair of honeymooning rats scurrying off. "Master Porfirio?" Ethelberthina knelt and gently touched his shoulder.

"It's me; I wish it weren't." The banged-up wizard pulled himself to a sitting position against the alley wall. "Is that you, Ethelberthina? Hard to see after one has been punched in both eyes more than necessary."

"Yes, sir," the girl replied dutifully. "What happened? I thought you'd left town."

"I almost left existence." Slowly and painfully he got to his feet, groaned, stretched his battered bones, then asked, "Child, do you love your father?"

Ethelberthina was taken aback by this unexpected question. "IЧI suppose I do. I don't like him very much at the moment, though. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, just the passing hope that I might prevail upon you to slip a little powdered toadstool into the old pus-bag's supper some fine day, as a favor to me."

"My father did this to you?" Being bright, she quickly amended her question to: "I mean, he was the one who ordered it done?"

The wizard's face looked like a ravaged berrypatch, purple and blue and crimson with a medley of bruises, cuts, and abrasions, yet he still managed to force his pummeled features into a sarcastic expression. "Just his little way of letting me know that so long as the town of Overford continues to collect taxes from and sell supplies to Overford AcademyЧto say nothing of how many locals the place employsЧhis official policy towards all school-related complaints will be one of proactive disinvolvement."

Ethelberthina gave him a hard look, "D'you means Hands Off?" she asked.