"Ringo, John - Council Wars 1 - There Will Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"I will, Master Talbot. Good day."
"God speed, avatar."
He stood tapping his lip in thought until the projection had walked out of the
room and his butler returned.
"Charles, send avatars to all of my friends telling them about this and
apologizing. Send a complaint to the Council on the subject. Send a copy with a
warning of further action to the Terraforming Project and contact Carb and ask
him to see who decided I was a good target."
"Very well, my lord. And you have another visitor."
"Who?" Edmund asked.
"Dionys."
"Oh, hellfire and brimstone," Talbot swore. "What does that donkey's ass want?"
"He did not vouchsafe that to me, my lord," the butler replied. "Shall I show
him in or tell him to go find a short and unpleasant route to hell?"
"Avatar or being?"
"Being, my lord."
"I'll meet him in the Hall," Talbot replied after a moment. "In three minutes."
"Yes, my lord."
Edmund first donned a tabard with his coat of arms, then walked to the main room
of the large house. The walls of the room were lined with armor and banners
celebrating victories over the years against a range of opponents. There were
katanas, broadswords and tulwars on the wall, while one end of the room had a
surreal sculpture consisting of literally hundreds of fantasy swords, virtually
all of them not worth the metal they were made from, welded together. The
tabards of a hundred knights acted as little more than wallpaper and the doors
were faced in battered shields.
A set of late medieval plate armor, quite battered and worn, stood on one side
of the room's outsized fireplace while the other side was flanked by a tower
shield from the top of which protruded a hammer and a long horseman's lance.
Edmund took a seat in front of the fireplace and waved at the butler to show his
visitor in.
Dionys McCanoc was tall, two meters and a bit, and broad as a house. He was
currently humanoform with a touch of elven enhancements; not enough to violate
protocols, but enough to set any true-elf's teeth on edge. His hair was long and
silver with holographic highlightsЧit hung down his back in a waterfall that
caught the light in a rainbow effectЧwhile his skin was pure midnight black, not
the black of a Negroid effect, but an absolute pitch black.
His eyes had vertically slit pupils and glowed faintly even in the light from
multiple oil lamps.
"Duke Edmund," he said in deep velvety baritone while bowing at the waist.
"What do you want, Dionys?" Edmund asked.
When Dionys had started showing up at tournaments, Edmund had taken the time to
do some research. They had never ended up in competition, but Talbot was always
careful to check out potential opponents, and problems, and Dionys had "problem"
tattooed to his forehead.
Talbot had determined that Dionys was a fairly recent pseudonym, as was the
general elven appearance. He had heard rumors that McCanoc's previous
incarnation had gone so far off the permissible track that it had actually come
to the attention of the Council.
Whether he had actually been remanded to therapy or simply placed on probation