"S. A. Gorden - The Duce of Pentacles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gorden S A)

hands, disembodied by an oval of light illuminating only the tabletop, break
the seal on the deck. The deck is placed so a card can be seen._
_A robed figure stands behind a table with a disk inscribed with a
pentagram, a sword, a cup, and a green stick. The figure's right hand is
raised with what looks like a small white wand of unknown substance. His left
hand is pointing to the ground. Over the figure's head, two circles twisted
and joined, forming infinity. The card is arrayed with a garden of flowers
that overflow its sides._
_After a pause, the deck is turned over. The cards shuffled and cut,
shuffled and cut, shuffled and cut. The deck is then placed in the middle of
the table and the top card is removed and placed face up next to the deck._
A man leaning on a green staff, his head bandaged, appears on its face,
and behind him stands a row of eight more green staffs in a barricade. The man
has a vaguely lost, melancholy look as he gazes off to his right.
_A noncommittal, "Humfff" comes from the figure cloaked in darkness.
The hands reach up, a_ *click*_, and the room plunges to black._
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CHAPTER 1: The Nine of Wands
His name was James Makinen. He was cleanly dressed but appeared
slovenly. His appearance had declined over the last five years when his
marriage started to come apart. James' disintegration accelerated when three
years ago he had stopped by his old house to pick up his two kids for the
weekend and discovered his wife had left for California with both children.
After spending all the money he had left after the divorce in court trying to
get his kids back, he gave up. His despair and lack of money accounted for
most of his disheveled looks. The rest of his looks came mostly from his
genetics.
James had thin, wispy, light caramel-colored hair and slightly
tarnished wire-rimmed glasses. His fair skin had a tendency to break out at
the least excuse. He had the overweight look of middle age. With his pale skin
and pudgy appearance, everyone considered him as sickly. Healthy by current
standards was a bronze complexion, broad chest and thin waist, the exact
opposite of his looks. No one believed that he had never missed a day of work
for sickness in the last ten years. His current health had less to do with
care and more to do with depression. After his wife and children left him, he
would lay in bed for hours unable to sleep. Six weeks after being served the
divorce papers, he had tried to exercise instead of tossing back and forth in
bed. After an hour of push-ups, sit-ups and jumping jacks, he had slept. This
went on until he discovered T'ai-Chi and the other forms, or katas, of
oriental shadow boxing. Now every night he would spend hours practicing the
different forms and designing his own. In complete exhaustion, he would crawl
into bed and the oblivion of sleep.
When the clock's alarm rang in the morning, he would climb into the
first clean clothes he found in his closet, check his face in a mirror to see
if he had to go to a barber, eat anything he found in the refrigerator that
hadn't turned green yet, and drive to the high school to teach. With
everything that had happened in his personal life, you would think that he had
become a bad teacher. He had been a great teacher, spending hours before and
after school to supplement the course work. Now he just put in his time.
However, since he had been great, his marking time was better then most