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

The temperature within my bottle is gently clement, though I allow snow in the mountains. I maintain a vast forest, comp
with hidden grottos, ruins, and mossy granite boulders on which strange shadows dance despite the arguments of light. The
an ocean as well, for when I feel like swimming or sailing.
Despite the bottle's enclosed environment, we will not suffocate within it. Once, long ago, my bottle dwelled for some
centuries at the bottom of the East China Sea following a shipwreck. Not a trace of the waters without disturbed our comf
although we did have a bit of trouble receiving guests.
Our bottle-owners have these treasures at their fingertips all their lives, though most of them know it not. Even in ignoran
ownership of a Kai Wren bottle always benefits one. Those who know its secrets may lengthen their lives for centuries by
taking a big vacation withinтАФthis is what has become of a lot of the old sages, many of whom I still visit.
Giving way to a small desire to celebrate, I found my wayтАФ"outward" I guess you'd call itтАФthrough a small, perpetually
and twilit region of mountains calculated to resemble a Taoist painting. For me, this is a kind of Faerie, where a man could
himself and beautifully sleep the sleep of a Rip Van Winkle, where a lady could become a Sleeping Beauty in a rose-tangle
castle and cave grown into a jade mountainside.
I heard a hearty howl from my left and another from my right. I walked on. Always good to let the boss know you're on
job.
After a time, an orange fu dog the size of a Shetland pony appeared to the left, a green one to the right. They seated
themselves close to me, their great, fluffy tails curved over their backs.
"Hello," I said softly. "How's the frontier?"
"Nothing unnatural," growled Shiriki, the green one.
"We passed the O'Keefe recently on his way out, but that is all."
Chamballa merely studied me with those great round eyes set in a flat face above a wide mouth. I have said that she wa
orange in color, but her coat was no garish citrus hue. It was closer to the ruddy glow of a coal that has not yet become fri
with ash.
I nodded.
"Good."
I had found them some nine and three-quarter centuries ago, half-starved, dying of thirstтАФfor even some more and less
natural creatures have their needs. Their forgotten temple had fallen apart, and they were a pair of unemployed temple dog
nobody wanted, roaming the Gobi. I gave them water and food and permitted them to come back to my bottle with me, tho
was a creature such as they had been cautioned about. I had always avoided contact with temple dogs if I possibly could.
and my like, they'd been trained to rend into tiny pieces, to be carried off to a variety of uncomfortable places, with a mess
dog-magic for company and security.
So we never talked employment. I just told them that if they cared to live in the abandoned dragon's cave in my Twilight
Lands, there was fresh water nearby, and I would see that there was food. And I would like if they would keep an eye on
for me. And if there was anybody nearby that they needed simply to howl.
After a few centuries details were forgotten and only the fact of their residency remains. They call me Lord Kai and I ca
them Shiriki and Chamballa.
I walked on. Where I'd no need whatsoever to go outside what with O'Keefe tending to everything, there was that small
desire to celebrate, to walk and to breathe the night air.
Coming to the edge of the worlds, I considered my appearance. Within my bottle I wore my natural shape: humanlike in
possessed two arms, two legs, a recognizable torso and head, the usual number of eyes and suchlike. However, I stood eig
feet tall on my taloned feet (these possessed of five toes) and my skin was a deep blue with a trace of purple. Around my
were angular segments of black. Some have supposed these are cosmetic (indeed, at one point a thousand years ago there
a fashion for such), but they are natural. They make my pupil-less dark eyes seem to glow and give my countenance a
forbidding cast, even when I might not wish it.
Yes, this would not do for the world of humans. Quickly, I slipped into the human guise I use for my infrequent journeys
without: a Chinese male of mature years, glossy black hair untouched by gray, average tall, but with an aura of command.
shaped my clothes into the dull fashions of the American city in which we now dwelled, sighing inwardly for the elegant ro
bygone China.
These preparations a matter of desire, I manifested outside the bottle with barely a pause in my stride. As I had wished,
in a garage belonging to the son of the late lady who'd formerly kept the bottle on a parlor table. Either location was an eas