"Robert Don Hughes - Pelman 02 - The Wizard in Waiting" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Robert Don)

of home improvements. New spires jetted up from repaved courtyards.
Reinforced parapets, gleaming in the sun from a recent whitewashing,
gazed grimly down on the city that sprawled below. Gaily colored
pennants fluttered in the breeze, at once festive and belligerent,
throwing a bright challenge to anyone foolish enough to attempt to
scale these heights. It was a stirring sight, to say the least, and
the House wheezed with pleasure .. . A cold draft blew through the
upper dungeon, chilling its inmates and puzzling the guards.

But of all the additions, by far the loveliest was a series of terraced
gardens that climbed from deep within the castle's heart to the very
roof itself. Fountains and walkways graced this artful wonder, and so
glorious was the greenery it would have stolen the castle's breath away
had the castle any breath to steal.

How odd, to grow so grand while sleeping!
The Imperial House took pride in its renewed appearance. Evidently it
still stood tall among structures. Yet all was not as it should be.
While its old walls and towers functioned just as they always had, as
the castle's organs of touch and smell, sight and hearing, the new
sections seemed devoid of life. There was no vision of the countryside
from the new spires. The new pavements heard no conversation. Was it
the House's imagination, or did these new constructions tingle, as if
still asleep?

Awake! the Imperial House ordered the new sections gruffly, and it
sweated some more as it sought to force consciousness into these
remodeled areas .. ,

"Kherda!" Queen Ligne shrilled at her Prime Minister. "p.o you see
this?" She glided delicate, bejewelled fingers across a marble-tiled
wait grown suddenly, inexplicably wet. "Just what is causing this?"
She demanded as she rubbed her moist fingertips together in his face.

"I have no idea, my Queen," Kherda replied quietly, annoyed by her
accusing tone. This wasn't unusual. Ligne's tone of voice regularly
annoyed him and seemed to grow more annoying with every passing day.
But just as regularly, Kherda swallowed his pique and smiled. Kherda
was quite creative at inventing new ways to grovel. "Perhaps, my Lady,
it's the weather?"

The House heard the conversation, and felt her caressing fingers, even
as it registered a hundred other comments from a hundred other rooms.
It focused its attention here, however, on this black-maned beauty and
her parasitic Prime Minister. This was by force of ancient habit,
really. Centuries of watching human behavior had taught the House
that, in the minds of humans at least, the most critical conversations
took place in the courts of Kings. That wasn't so, as the castle knew
very well, having listened to years of sloppy drivel coming from this
very throne room. It was often much more fun to hear what the