"Jane Lindskold - Lord Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lindskold Jane)

wore upon that hand began to glow. When it had reached a sufficient level, I pressed it against the bottom of the bottle, ma
it with the sign of Kai Wren, master bottlemaker, my sign.
I stepped back and regarded it there on the tabletop, allowing myself a faint smile. Then I seated myself cross-legged up
heap of cushions and relaxed into the moment.
Kai Wren bottles are of course pricelessтАФgoing back over fourteen centuries. I don't know how many of them I've mad
over all that time. Virtually indestructible, they will keep any wine decanted into them fresh for a span greater than two nor
human lifetimes. They will do the same with cut flowers. And even if nothing is placed within them, they are said to bring t
owners considerable good luckтАФby way of wealth, good health, happiness, long life. And this, too, is true. I place a certain
measure of my particular chi within their structure, and my will is made manifest within my work.
A few knowledgeable private collectors have gone to inordinate lengths to obtain Kai Wren specimens for their collectio
Sorcerers have sought for them and conjured with them, for they do lend themselves to magical usage. A few Oriental art
experts in museums and galleries know of themтАФand there are full-time scouts who make a living searching out my piece
their wealthy employers.
Oliver O'Keefe entered the room with a catlike silence, realizing that I had finally completed this one and that possiblyтАФ
ways incomprehensible to himтАФI was happy. I have made a study of emotions and I think it may be that I was.
After placing the bottle on the table once more, I rose. O'Keefe grinned at me. He was a short man, solid though not sto
with fair skin that bore a host of freckles, and close-cropped, sandy hair.
We made quite a contrast, he and I, no matter what shape I took.
" 'Tis a pretty one, boss," he said. "Even better than that green one you did back in the I700s, I think, and that's always b
my favorite."
"Why, thank you, Ollie. I've a special fondness for this one myself."
"
'Tis a Saturday night, and Tony's on duty at Pizza Heaven. Feel like a celebration?"
I smiled. "What shall we get on it?"
"Well, you always like your pepperoni," he said.
"That's true. And perhaps a few mushroomsтАФbe they very fresh."
"I would check on this, of course."
"Of course. Sausage? If it smells fresh?"
"Excellent idea."
"You suggest something."
"Some sliced bell pepper?"
"Very good. Might as well pick up a few bottles of Mexican beer."
"Certainly."
"There's still plenty of money in the barrel?"
"Oh, yes."
I smiled again. It was virtually the same order time after time. But we enjoyed our little ritual in arriving at it.
I watched him zip into his jacket and go. The man served me. He'd been with me for over three hundred years, what wit
four first-class spells that kept him in good repair. But he was unlike any servant I'd employed before.
I'd met him in a pub in Dublin, where he'd gone to sell his fiddle. In my ignorance, I asked him what a fiddle was, to whic
proceeded to play his for me. Instead of buying it, I offered him a job, and we'd been together ever since.
I am not overfond of going out into the world of humans, and Ollie was an excellent go-between for me on such excursio
He was glib, personable, and he always seemed to know his way around. This is no small talent, given how quickly the wor
humans has changed these recent centuries.
I left my glassblowing lab and strolled, admiring my wall hangings, my collection of rugs, I could have gone on forever. M
personal bottleтАФwhich this wasтАФis an entire world unto itself, its interior noncontinuous with human time and space. Any
those bottles of which I had spoken contained their worlds. You could fill them with water and put flowers in without distur
one. Or, if you could figure out how to enter, you could make your way inside without getting your feet wet.
Mine has its own strange flora and fauna, including a troupe of insubstantial milkweed fairies who dwell in a curtained-of
section where a light, misty rainstorm has been going on for about thirteen centuries now. There are ogres, too, and dragon
other creatures even stranger.