"Steven Piziks - Smoke and Mirrors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piziks Steven)

snatched a handful of stone chips from the boxтАФrefuse from Granny's workroomтАФand flung them
furiously to the ground.
"You lied to me?" he screamed. "Your life is forfeit!" And he hurled the mirror to the stone at his
feet just as Ramdane finished his chant.
The mirror struck the rock and exploded into a hundred cloudy shards. A fine gray mist fogged
upward, then sucked itself down into the stone at the talismonger's feet. Laughing, the talismonger ground
the fragments into dust beneath his heel.
"Now we'll see," he crowed, "how a talismonger dies."
And a wild scream of pain and terror cut through the laughter.
***
"I don't want a new body," Crystamel said, hunched at Ramdane's feet. "I like viff one."
"Don't you think it's awfully heavy?" Ramdane commented.
"The voice is really grating," Dagmar put in. "And the extra fangs make you sound like a leaky
teakettle."
"Vere iff vat," Crystamel acknowledged. She scratched her ear with one claw and ran a long tongue
over improbably pointy teeth. "Fwitching bodief would alfo take the tafte of vat talifmonger out of my
mouf. He waf awfully dirty."
"He should have looked where he was standing," Dagmar observed as she plucked the strongbox
from a bloody mess of ragged clothes and ruined talismans.
"I'm rather glad he didn't," Ramdane replied. "He'd have known something was up if he'd noticed
the stone on the grass was Granny's demon carving." He sighed heavily. "The woman bargains like a
moneylender. It'll take me weeks to make enough talismans to cloak her house again."
"It's the only fair way to pay her back," Dagmar remarked. "Between the demon carving and the
meat statue, you've ruined two of her better pieces."
"Fo when do I get my new body?" Crystamel asked. "You ftill have the cat ftatue, don't you? You
could fange me right now."
"No!" Dagmar and Ramdane said together. Then they laughed.


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