"Jones, Diana Wynne - Mixed Magics" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Tonino put back his head and sang, to Cat's surprise, very sweetly and tunefully, in what seemed to be Latin, while Gabriel's hands moved on the bedspread, just slightly. As the song finished, the pillows behind Gabriel's head rebuilt themselves into a swelling stack, which pushed the old man into sitting position. After that, they pushed him away from themselves so that he was sitting up on his own, quite steadily.

"Well done!" said Gabriel. He was clearly delighted. A faint pink crept over his jutting cheeks, and his eyes glittered in their caves. "You have very strong and unusual magic, young man." He turned eagerly to Cat. "Now I can talk to you, Eric. This is important. Are your remaining lives quite safe? I have reason to believe that someone is looking for them as well as for mine."

Cat's mind went to a certain cardboard book of matches, more than half of them used. "Well, Chrestomanci has them locked in the castle safe, with a lot of spells on them. They feel all right."

Gabriel's eyes glittered into distance while he considered Cat's lives, too. "True," he said. "They feel secure. But I was never totally happy while Christopher's other life was locked in there. I put his last life into a gold ring, you know, and locked it in that same safeЧthis was at a time when he seemed to be losing a life once a week, and something had to be done, you understandЧbut it was a great relief to me when he married and we could give the life to Millie as her wedding ring. I would greatly prefer it if your lives were equally well guarded. A book of matches is such a flimsy thing."

Cat knew this. But Chrestomanci seemed to him to be the best guardian there could be. "Who do you think is looking for them?" he asked.

"Now that is the odd thing," Gabriel answered, still looking into distance. "The only person who seems to fit the shapes of the magics I am sensing has, I swear, been dead and gone at least two hundred years. An enchanter known as Neville Spiderman. He was one of the last of the really bad ones."

Cat stared at Gabriel staring into distance like a bony old prophet. On the other side of the bed, Tonino was staring, too, looking as scared as Cat felt. "What," Cat asked huskily, "makes you think it might be someone from the past?"

"For this reasonЧ" Gabriel began.

Then the thing Cat had been dreading happened.

Gabriel de Witt's face suddenly lost all expression. Behind him, the pillows began slowly subsiding, letting the old man down into lying position again. As they did so, Gabriel de Witt seemed to climb out of himself. A tall old man in a long white nightshirt unfolded himself from the old man who was lying down and stood for a moment looking rather sadly from Cat to Tonino, before he walked away into a distance that was somehow not part of the white bedroom.

Both their heads turned to follow him as he walked. Cat realized he could see Tonino through the shape of the departing old man, and the lilies of the valley on the bedside table, and then the corner of the white wardrobe. The old man was getting smaller all the time as he walked, until at last he was lost into white distance.

Cat was astonished not to find himself screamingЧalthough he almost did when he looked back at Gabriel de Witt lying on his pillows and found Gabriel's face blue-pale and more sunken than ever, and his mouth slowly dropping wider and wider open. Cat could not seem to utter a sound, or move either, until Tonino whispered, "I saw you through him!"

Cat gulped. "Me, too. I saw you. Why was that?"

"Was that his last life?" Tonino asked. "Is he truly dead now?"

"I don't know," said Cat. "I think we ought to call someone."

But it seemed as if someone already knew. Footsteps thumped on the carpet outside and Miss Rosalie burst into the room, followed by Mr. Roberts. They both rushed to the bed and stared anxiously down at Gabriel de Witt as if they expected him to wake up any minute. Cat snatched another look at that gaping mouth and strange blue-wax complexion, and thought that he had never seen anyone more obviously dead. He had seen his parents just before their funeral, but they had looked almost asleep and not like this at all.

"Don't worry, boys," Miss Rosalie said. "It's only another life gone. He's still got two more."

"No, you're forgetting the life he gave to Asheth," Mr. Roberts reminded her.

"Oh, so I am," Miss Rosalie said. "Silly of me. But he's still got one left. Why don't you go downstairs, boys, until the new life takes over? It can sometimes be quite a while."

Cat and Tonino jumped thankfully out of their chairs. But as they did so, Gabriel stirred. His mouth shut with a snap and his face became the face of a person againЧa person who looked pale and unwell, but full of strong feelings despite that.

"Rosalie," he said, weak and fretful, "warn Chrestomanci. Neville Spiderman is sniffing around this house. I felt him very clearly just now."

"Oh, nonsense, Gabriel!" Miss Rosalie said, brisk and bossy. "How could he be? You know Neville SpidermanЧwhatever his real name wasЧlived at the time of the first Chrestomanci. That was more than a hundred years before you were born!"

"I felt him, I tell you!" Gabriel insisted. "He was there when my last life was leaving."

"You can't possibly know that," Miss Rosalie insisted.

"I do know. I made a study of the man," Gabriel insisted in return. His voice was more and more weak and quavery. "When I was first made Chrestomanci, I studied him, because I needed to know what a really evil enchanter was like and he was the most ingenious of the lot. And this is very ingenious, Rosalie. He's trying to make himself stronger than any Chrestomanci ever was. Warn Christopher he's not safe. Warn Eric particularly."