"Christopher Stasheff - Wizard in Rhyme 01 - Her Majesty's Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

Her MajestyтАЩs Wizard тАУ Wizard In Rhyme 01



Christopher Stashef




CHAPTER 1

Matthew Mantrell leaned forward across the little table in the campus coffee shop and tapped the
sheet of rune-covered parchment before him. He tried to put some of the urgency he felt into his voice.

"I tell you, Paul, this is important!"

Paul just sighed and shook his head, reaching for the last of his coffee. He didn't even glance at the
parchment.

Somehow, Matt never had been able to make others take him seriously. He was tall enough, he
thought, over medium height, and fencing practice had kept him lean and wiry. But his eyes were an
honest, warm brown-like his hair. His nose was out of Sherlock Holmes-but from Watson, not Holmes.
He looked, unfortunately, good-natured, friendly, and kind.

Across the table, Paul put his cup down and cleared his throat. "As I remember it," he said, "you're
supposed to be working on your doctorate. How long since you did any research on your dissertation?"

"Three months," Matt admitted.

Paul shook his head. "Then you'd better get on the stick, man. You don't have that much more time."

It was true. He had a month of the spring semester left, plus the summer. After that, it was out into the
wilderness of two-year college teaching, with little or no research time, probably never to emerge into the
light of a Ph.D. and eventual professorship. He shuddered at the thought, but screwed up the remnants of
determination and declared, "But this is important! I feel it in my bones!"
 "So what are you going to tell your committee? That you dropped everything because-so you say-this
piece of manuscript fell out of an old copy of the Njaal saga while you were poking around in the library
stacks?"

"It did!"

"So how come nobody else ever found it? They've been sifting that library for fifty years. How do we
know it isn't a hoax?"

"It's in runes..."

"Which you-and who knows how many others-can write." Paul shook his head slowly. "One scrap of
parchment, with runes spelling out words in a language that sounds like a mess of German, French,
maybe Old Norse, and probably some Elvish and Barsoomian worked in."