"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 06 - Trapped" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

Death Hotel really exists, and I'm glad I got the chance to put it into a story. My only regret is that I
couldn't work in one other tidbit about the Hotel: it sits close to a pioneer cemetery with a special gate
designed to prevent witches from stealing corpses. Two hundred years ago, witches were supposedly
incapable of turning sharp corners, so the gate forced people to turn sharply several times on their way in
or out.

It must have been a great annoyance to pallbearers.



Earth: Town of Simka, Feliss Province

One day before the spring equinox

2457 A.D.




1: THE POT OF GOLD
It began, as many things do, in a tavern: about eight o'clock on a Friday evening, in The Pot of Gold on
Post-Hoc Lane in Simka. Contrary to its end-of-the-rainbow name, The Pot of Gold was a dreary
blood-clot of a placeтАФthe sort of vomitous swill-hole where the lamps had to be locked in wire cages to
prevent drunks from swigging the kerosene, where the tapman's only insurance policy was a trio of
flintlock pistols worn on a grease-smudged bandoleer, and where the Steel Caryatid squashed a
cockroach with her tankard before asking, "Why would anyone go on a quest?"

"For glory," said Sir Pelinor.

"For God," said Sister Impervia.

"For kicks," said Myoko Namida.

"For Gretchen Kinnderboom," said I, "provided the task didn't take too much effort, and Gretchen
promised to be extravagantly grateful."

The Caryatid slapped my foot (which was propped on the table beside her). "Be serious, Phil," she told
me. "I'm talking about real, honest-to-goodness quests, not trotting down to Dover-on-Sea to fetch
peach-scented soap."

I sat up straighter. "They've got a new supply of peach-scented soap?"

"Vanity, vanity," murmured Sister Impervia, whose own taste in soap could be described as "The more
lye, the better."

"We're talking about quests," said the Caryatid, "and I don't understand why a sane person would go on
one. Not that anyone at this table qualifies as sane."

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