"Esther M. Friesner - Sphynxes Wild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

Prolog
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The wizard awoke in the abandoned motel and found his companion gone. It was not
unexpected. Ever since they had come to this place, she was forever running off,
pretending to still possess the freedom his enchantments denied her. He lay on his back,
the silk sheets cool and slick on his bare brown skin, and stared at the ceiling while he
thought about her.
Roaches scurried overhead, mistaking the darkness of boarded windows for the
familiar shelter of night. It was simple enough for a spell's whispered utterance to let him
see them, in spite of the dark. His magic could give him a cat's eyes, and more. Another
weirding, as easily uttered, and the scuttling vermin would drop from above in a rain of
fire-crisped chitin. The wizard smiled his indulgence, eyelids drooping lazily. He was
feeling generous; he would let them live. Sometimes it was enough to know you had the
power to do a thing without actually having to prove you could do it.
"Not like the old times," he murmured. His eyes closed completely. A dream of painted
marble pillars sprouted from the cold green linoleum. The cracked mirror opposite his
bed swirled with a hastening vortex of spangled light, drawing out the dimensions of the
squalid room like a master glassblower twirling his bright bubble of molten glass into a
never-ending thread of rainbow.
Light danced before him, he followed after; light, that knew the figures and the steps
that could lead a man back down the spiral of the years. The pillars were more solid now,
exquisitely fluted, their capitals banded with gold. Rose petals fell from silken canopies
stretched between them, just beneath the ceiling. The courtiers laughed, tilting back their
heads to welcome the fragrant rain. Some opened their mouths and tried to catch the
tumbling petals on their tongues. He had seen children in Pannonia behave so, in the
winter snows. In the alcove, flute girls played, and a melancholy Jew from Samaria lured
exotic harmonies from his harp. The emperor was amused. He motioned to his favorite
freedman and commanded further entertainment.
The freedman blanched at the emperor's words. His hands were trembling even as he
spread them helplessly, making excuses. The emperor's face seemed to soak up all the
blood that left his servant's features. The outraged roar of his thwarted whim could be
heard down all the galleries of the ages.
What do you mean, my sorcerer has gone?
"He meant exactly what he said, old toad." The wizard's words were a sigh.
"Elaboration and rhetoric never were poor Varo's strong points, if he knew they existed at
all. You never could stand to have your servants smarter than yourself. I became weary
of holding the glass up to your nonexistent intelligence, and so I went, that was all. As
Varo told you, I was simply gone, and prudently gone forever, or at least until word
reached me that you were safely dead and deified."
A ghost of himself from a past yet more remote hung in ashen silence behind the
emperor's divan. The phantom of a phantom ran through the mage's whole repertoire of
hollow tricksтАФtricks just clever enough to make men say how wise the emperor was to
have hired such a sorcerer, never too clever, lest men wonder why such a sorcerer
wasted his time in service to such a bay-crowned fool. Then the emperor struck his
freedman across the face so hard that the blood ran from Varo's smashed nose, and the
ghostly magician vanished. The summoned dream flew with him.
The living mage opened his eyes again. "Those days are lost, and well lost," he said.
"Some things are best left sleeping." He yawned and stretched, the outline of his
long-limbed body a spare and lanky shape beneath the sheets. The silk showed every