"01 - A Difficulty With Dwarves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Craig Shaw)

I knew who it was even before the smoke had cleared. Only one creature I knew had a voice as squeakily high and relentlessly cheerful as that.

'Talk about Brownie Power!' the voice added.

There was no doubting it now. A small, brown figure jumped merrily up and down on a pile of sneezing wizards. It had to be Tap the Brownie.

'Boy, is it great to be back!' Tap continued. 'I had a hard time leaving you before, let me tell you. I mean, who wants

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to go back to making shoes when you could visit Vushta, the city of a thousand forbidden delights! But now I can do all the visiting I want. That is, once I deliver my message!'

Tap unfolded a piece of brown parchment which had been stuck in his belt. 'This is an official proclamation from his Brownieship,' he began.

Tap paused to clear his throat, then spoke in a clear, high voice above the constant sneezing: 'Three hundred twenty pairs of laces; two thousand two hundred four buckles; four hundred twelve yards of -'

His tiny voice died in his throat. 'This appears to be an inventory list,' he remarked as he rapidly searched beneath the rest of his belt. 'Oh, dear, I must have left the proclamation in my other suit. Well, never mind. We'll get it later. Let me just say that, from what our superior Brownie Intelligence has gathered, you folks are in a lot of trouble. Yes, even more than before!'

Only now did he seem to notice the roomful of sneezing wizards. The Brownie whistled. 'Looks like I didn't get here a moment too early! With what's going to happen, you're going to need all the Brownie Power you can get!'

What did this all mean? I turned to my master, to ask him what to do. But the Brownie's arrival had been too much for his malady. Now Ebenezum, like all the dozens of other wizards in this great hallway, was sneezing uncontrollably.

TWO

'The sages say that "You cannot have too many friends," and for a change, the sages are largely correct in their sagacity. Anyone can see, for example, that the friendlier a crowd, the better a wizard's chances for survival after his spell has gone seriously awry.

'However, there are some circumstances when even friends can become burdensome to the working sorcerer. Wizards, after all, need their privacy, especially when involved in extremely complicated and delicate conjurations of powerful magical forces, or when dealing in spells concerning the concealment of large sums of money.

'But friends do form a very important part of a wizard's life, especially when said mage must go on a fearsome quest far from his native land and thus needs someone at home to take care of his cat.'

- THE TEACHINGS OF EBENEZUM, Volume XXVII

The door that led from the Great Hall outside crashed inwards then smashed against the floor, its hinges ripped from the wall with the force of its opening.

'Doom!' the immense warrior Hendrek intoned. His bulk filled the large doorway, a huge shadow that blotted

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out the late summer sun. He held the doomed warclub Headbasher in one immense hand, the club no man could own, but could only rent. The winged helmet atop his head turned as he surveyed the room.

'Doom!' Hendrek repeated. 'Something is amiss!'

'That's what I like about you, big fellow,' a higher, infinitely more grating voice replied. 'You're always able to point out any problem, no matter how obvious it is to those around you.' The truth-telling demon Snarks poked his small, green head around the warrior's belly. 'What have we here? It looks like an influenza convention.'

'It's terrible!' I explained. 'Ebenezum's malady has spread to every other wizard in Vushta!'

'Doom!' the warrior responded with instant understanding.