"Kelly McCullough - WebMage" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCullough Kelly)

if I could draw more attention. If she ever found out who'd done this, I was a dead man. Still, I found
myself delaying our departure. The back trail I'd left should keep the dogs off a little while longer. If only
I could find the damned spell. I searched the room one last time with my eyes.

"Processing," said the goblin, his voice mechanical.Then, after a few seconds, "Reporting. Your room in
Comstock at the U of M in the prime-minus-3051 Decision Locus is vacant."

"Thanks, Mel," I said. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Ick, ack, ptooie," coughed Melchior, his voice returning to its normal whiny growl. He rubbed his
tongue as if trying to clean off the remnants of the webspider. "When Lachesis wrote the code for those
things, why did she make them so bitter?"

"I'm tempted to say it's just another manifestation of my greatest grandmother's sparkling temperament.
But that's not actually the case. Uncle Valarian asked her once while I was around. She said it's to
remind us that the spiders are serious and potentially dangerous magical constructs, not toys."

"Hmmph.Why don't you fix them?"

"There are several reasons." I ticked them off on my fingers. "First, I'm not the one who has to eat them.
Second, their programming is much more involved and nasty than it's worth. Third, they're virtuallybug
free, if you'll pardon the pun. Fourth, and finally, it would seriously irritate Lachesis, and that stupid I'm
not."
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Lachesis, the Fate who measures the threads, is not a Goddess to be trifled with. For convenience's
sake I usually refer to her as my grandmother rather than adding in all of the necessary greats, and she is
more fond of me than of some of my relatives. But bonds of affection and blood are only a limited shield
from her anger.

"Now," I continued, "before you come up with any more distracting questions, I have orders. Melchior,
establish a locus transfer protocol link with the Comstock hub. As soon as that's done, initiate transfer.
We've got to get out of here."

The little goblin glared at me but went to work. He pulled a piece of chalk and a bit of string out of his
belly pouch. Using the string to measure, he drew a large hexagram on the floor and spat another
netspider into the center. It blinked out the second it landed, leaving behind a glowing blob of gold silk.

"Connecting to prime.minus3051," intoned the goblin.

A few moments later the light changed from gold to green. "Connect," said Melchior."Initiating Gate."

He dropped to his knees and grabbed the node. As he pulled on it, the glow spread outward, filling the
whole hexagram. Once the diagram was completely green, the light rose to form a hexagonal column
about six feet high and two across.

"Gate established. There you go, Boss. We can leave whenever you're ready."