"Sheri S. Tepper - The True Game 2 - Necromancer Nine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

"Ah. Well, you will not begin that road tonight, will you? There is time for hot food, and for a bath?
Some talk, perhaps. I have not had news of the south for some time. .
So I went with him to his camp, a sturdy stone house near the mill, once almost in ruins but reroofed
and made solid by the Immutables and those pawns released from Bannerwell. We were waited on by
quiet people with faces I thought I recognized from the time of my captivity. At my unspoken question,
Riddle explained.
"These were Mandor's people, yes. Once his powers were nullified by our being here, he could not
beguile them any longer. None would stay. They saw him, feared him, gradually learned what he had
done to them and so began to hate him, I think. He could not bear it."
"What had he done to them?" I asked cynically. "More than any Gamesman does?"
"More," he said. "Though perhaps it was not he who conceived it. . . . No. I will say no more about
it."
I wanted to hear no more about it, though later I was to wish I had insisted. I told him of the
disappearance of Windlow and of Himaggery. He withdrew into startled silence, but then told me of
other vanishments he knew of. He speculated, almost in a whisper. I drank wine and tried not to fall
asleep. Others of the Immutables came in and greeted me kindly enough. They murmured among
themselves while I yawned. Then we were alone and Riddle was leaning across the table to put his face
close to mine.
"I have no right to ask it, Peter, but I beg a service of you. One you may be loath to give."
"I will do what I can," I murmured, half asleep.
"We need to speak with Mandor's spirit."
The sickness rose in me so that I choked on it, retching, tears pouring from my eyes as I tried not to
vomit upon the table. In a moment he was putting cool water on my face, giving me a cup to drink. "How
can you ask it," I gargled at him. "And why? What would you know that his ghost can tell you?"
"We have found certain ... things in Bannerwell. After Huld had gone, our people found them and
summoned me. They are ... things which some of these pawns have reason to remember with great pain.
We have studied them as best we may. We need to know what they are, how used, but more important,
from whence they came. Mandor would have known. We believe they belonged to him."
"Certain things. He showed them to me. They were stored in a back room of the stone house,
strange things, crystal linkages, wires, boards on which wires and crystals together made patterns full of
winking lights which told me nothing. They reminded me of something . . . something. Suddenly I had it.
"Riddle. Long ago-ah, not long ago. About a year. Mertyn sought to protect me from being eaten up in a
Game. His servant, Nitch, sewed a thing into my tunic, a thing of wires and beads, a thing like these
things. If you would know of them, ask Mertyn."
"We have done. It was Nitch who knew the doing of it, not Mertyn. Nitch has gone, gone in the
night without a word."
"Vanished? Like the others?"
"No. Simply gone. Have you heard of 'magicians'?"
Where had I heard of. . . yes. "Gamesmaster Gervirnse. He said the little blue Gamesmen were
made by magicians, west somewhere. I had not heard of magicians before, save as we all have. At
Festivals, doing tricks with birds and making flowers appear out of nothing."
"I do not think a Festival magician made these." He shut the door upon them and led me back to the
table before the fire. I knew he would ask me again. I wanted to refuse. How could I refuse? Oh,
Gamelords, in what guise might the spirit of Mandor rise to greet the eidolon of Dorn?
"By Towering Tamor, Riddle, you ask a hard thing."
"I know. But it is said your Talent is great. I would not ask it, save you come so fortuitously to our
need. I thought of it when I saw your mask, at first, and I would not ask not if I thought it endangered
you.
How could I tell him that it did endanger me? It sickened me, yes. Brought nightmares and horrors,
but endangerment? Well, I would lose no blood nor flesh over it. Perhaps that was the only