"Hawke, Simon - Sorcerer 3 - The Ambivalent Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

Guild and Royal Wizard to the Kingdom of Pitt, will not be trifled with by some
upstart demigod from the ethereal planes!"
Oh, please. For one thing, I'm no demigod, I'm just a struggling writer trying
to make a living. And you're a fictional character, for God's sake. You don't
even exist except in my imagination.
"Do not attempt to work your wiles on me, Narrator. I think, therefore I exist."
It's "I think, therefore I am. Cogito, ergo sum." Rene" Descartes. If you're
going to quote, get it right. I will not have my readers thinking I'm a sloppy
writer. You've already gotten this book off to a really bizarre start, and my
editors still haven't recovered from the last time you pulled something like
this. They just don't understand how a writer can lose control over his own
characters. I had to take some time off from this series and write a serious
book just to prove to them I haven't gone totally around the bend. They're still
not sure about me, and it's all your fault. This isn't helping any. You're
making my life very difficult, you know.
"Not nearly as difficult as it is going to be," said Warrick, concentrating
fiercely on the crystal in an effort to bring forth an image of the Narrator, so
he would finally know what the mysterious "voice in the ether" looked like.
However, at precisely that moment, Teddy, his little troll familiar, had a
slight mishap. Only Warrick was capable of hearing the strange, disembodied
entity he called "the Narrator," so as he watched his master speaking to the
crystal ball, Teddy could only hear one side of the conversation. As a result,
he wasn't paying very close attention to his work, and the little troll backed
into a chair and knocked over a precariously balanced pile of ancient scrolls
and vellum tomes. They went crashing to the floor of the sanctorum, making a
tremendous racket and upsetting Warrick's concentration.
"Very clever," Warrick said, "but you have only succeeded in delaying the
inevitable. I have not attained the highest rank in the Sorcerers and Adepts
Guild for nothing. My concentration is not so easily broken." He returned his
attention to the crystal ball, willing an image of the narrator to appear.
Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen, because no matter how hard he
concentrated, he couldn't change the fact that this particular crystal ball
wasn't equipped for optically correct visual reception. The most it could do was
allow him to hear voices from the ethereal planes and see vague, indistinct
forms and pretty swirling colors.
"That's ridiculous!" said Warrick. "Of what use is a scrying crystal if one
cannot see images within it?"
Not much use at all, apparently. Too bad.
"This is absurd! I have been using this scrying crystal for years and it has
never yet failed to serve me properly."
I guess it must be broken, then.
"Nonsense. The scrying crystal is functioning perfectly," Warrick insisted. "And
as Warrick redoubled his prodigious powers of concentration, despite all the
efforts of the Narrator, the swirling eddies in the crystal started to resolve
into an image -"
No, they didn't. And cut that out.
"Despite all his narrative wiles, the voice in the ether could not control the
image that started to resolve within the crystal as Warrick concentrated
fiercely, and in answer to his will, the swirling mists within the scrying
crystal cleared, revealing -"