"03 - A Disagreement with Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Craig Shaw)

A Disagreement With Death
Verse the Third in The Ballad of Wuntvor
Craig Shaw Gardner


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Uh-oh. Here we are at the end of another trilogy. This time, I'd tike to thank those people and things that made me The Way I am Today, specifically: Jay Ward and Bill Scott's Rocky and Bullwinkle, Walt Kelly's Pogo, Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge and anything made by Chuck Jones; the writings of Robert Sheckley, Jack Sharkey and L. Sprague de Camp (often with Fletcher Pratt); Preston Sturges's movies; Stan Freberg commercials (who put those eight great tomatoes in that itty-bitty can?); Danny Kaye in Frank and Panama's The Court Jester (a partial prototype for Wuntvor--the vessel with the pestle holds the brew that is true); and almost anything made by those Monty Python people. In addition, much of these books was written while listening to the recordings of Louis Jordon ("Beware, Brother, Beware") and Kid Creole and the Coconuts ("Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy"). You have been warned.

The usual round of thanks must also go to my stalwart and long-suffering friends, including Jeff, Richard, Victoria and Mary (a.k.a. Team Cambridge), who critiqued mis whole thing as it went along, and the lovely Elisabeth, who puts up with me wandering around the apartment chuckling at my own jokes. And then there's those New York people, like my Superagent, Merrilee Heifetz, and the entire friendly and helpful staff at Writers House; and also my Supereditor, Ginjer Buchanan, who almost always changes stuff back when I yell and scream, and everybody else at Berkley/Ace (Hi, Susan! Hi, Beth!).

VI



Lastly, I would like to dedicate this, the last of the Ebenezum books, to the memory of my grandfather

Walter W. Shaw

who introduced me to the world of art and a world of wonders

ONE

There is one fact that every magician must accept: Sorcery is not a stable science. Quite the contrary, magic is ever-changing, and the nimble mage must learn to change with it. Magic is never done. It goes on forever and ever, constantly new, impossible to categorize or summarize. The magician must never consider a spell complete and successful until he or she sees the results. He must realize as well that every spell has a counterspell, and, in a world where magic rules, all things are possible. Using magic becomes a lifetime's work, as the mage discovers that all the spells and conjurations grow together into a force beyond the magician's simple goals, and further join with all the other spells, of all the other wizards, past, present and future, becoming an ever-changing tapestry beyond mortal ken, a force that no wizard can ever completely understand. Or completely take for granted.

That's magic in a nutshell. And that's my final word on the matter. I think.

--From Spells That Hate Wizards,

and the Wizards Who Love Them, third edition,

by Ebenezum, greatest wizard in the Western Kingdoms

1

2

"Wuntvor?"

I looked up. I realized that someone was calling my name, and perhaps had been doing so for quite some time.

"Wuntvor?" the young woman's voice repeated. It was the voice of my beloved, the witch Norei. "Do you want to talk?"

I shrugged. I did not care. After what had happened, I didn't care about much of anything. My master, Ebenezum, the greatest mage in the Western Kingdoms, was gone. He had been taken by Death. Worse still, Death had taken the wizard because the specter could not take me, whom it wanted because of some nonsense about my being the Eternal Apprentice, always instantaneously reborn into another apprenticing form, forever bumbling, forever helping heroes throughout eternity, and therefore forever beyond Death's grasp. And for this very reason--my supposed unobtainability by the creature to whom all came in time-- Death desired me. The specter coveted my soul, and would go to any lengths to obtain it.

Norei squatted by my side, so that her face was even with mine. She gripped my chin with her cool, delicate fingers.

"Are you going to sit there for the rest of your life?"

When I did not reply immediately, she pulled her hand away. I blinked, glancing down at the dirt and grass between my knees, then looked up again at Norei's concerned expression. I sighed. I shrugged. Death had taken my master. What did it matter?