"John Morressy - The Questing Of Kedrigern" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morressy John)

see a large gunny sack thrash about on the floor for an instant and then
disappear. A stocky young man, swarthy and heavy-browed, his thick features
scarlet with rage, jumped to his feet.


"All right, creep! You sneak-spell me, I show you what real wizard can do,"
he said, gesturing at the one who stood opposite him, laughing.
The laughing conjurer dodged. An elderly magician standing behind him, deep
in conversation with a veiled seeress, sprouted a huge pair of antlers. The
conjurer, meanwhile, made a complicated figure in the air, and the wizard
roared in pain as a beehive materialized in his pants. The magician, becoming
aware of his altered state, turned. The seeress stepped to his side. Their
expressions were ominous.
Kedrigern worked a quick short-term immunity spell for himself, prepratory
to stepping in and putting things in order. As he spoke the final phrase,
Princess appeared, hands raised, at the center of the four figures. "That will
be enough! I insistтАФ" she declared.
Then she vanished.
"You bloody lot of nits! Look what you've gone and done to Princess!" Bess
the Wood-witch shrieked in a bloodcurdling voice. The conjurer and the wizard
disappeared. The antlered magician and his veiled companion turned on Bess
menacingly, and Kedrigern quickly turned them to stoneтАФ temporarily.
The remaining guests departed in silent haste, without goodbyes. Kedrigern
remained with Bess and two lifelike stone figures.
"What happened to Princess, Bess? Did you see?" he asked.
"One of them silly amateurs hit her with a spell when she stepped in between
them. Maybe they both got her. Anyway, old Bess fixed them. Turned them into
flies, that's what I did."
"Thanks, Bess."
"It's Bess should do the thanking, Keddie. Old Antlers and his lady friend
were about to do me in."
"I think it was just a nervous reaction on their part. Understandable,
certainly."
Bess nodded. "They had a drop or two of Old Fenny Snake. That makes some
people jumpy."
Kedrigern thought that that was probably all to the good. When the magician
and the seeress awoke from his spell the next day, they would remember
nothing. Neither would the


rest of the guests, in all likelihood. Old Fenny Snake had that effect on
people.
"I botched it, didn't I, Keddie?"
"What?"
"Old Bess botched it. Brought along a jar of her best, and spoilt your
lovely party," the wood-witch said. A tear trickled down her puffy red cheek.
"Don't cry, Bess. It wasn't your fault."
"Old Bess always does it," she wailed. "Never learns her lesson, not Bess.
There's some as can handle Old Fenny Snake and some as can't, and I keeps
encountering the second category everywhere I goes." She sniffed and wiped her