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

was said Wizards, were taught. Mertyn's House where my thalan was chief Gamesmaster, where I had
grown up in the nurseries to be bullied; by Karl Pig-face and to love Mandor and to depart. A sick,
sweet feeling went through me, half nausea, half delight, together with the crazy idea that I would ask
Mertyn to let me stay at the House, be a student again. Most students did not leave until they were
twenty-five. I could have almost a decade here, in the peace of Schooltown. I came to myself to find
Chance clutching my horse's bridle and staring at me in concern.
"What is it, boy? You look as though you'd been ghost bit."
"Nothing." I laughed, a bit unsteadily. "A crazy idea, Brother Chance."
"You haven't called me that since we left here."
"No. But we're back, now, aren't we? Don't worry, Chance. I'm all right." We turned the horses
over to a stable pawn and went in through the small side door beside the kitchens. It was second nature
to do so, habit, habit to remove my hat, to go off along the corridor behind Chance, habit to hear a
familiar voice rise tauntingly behind me.
"Why, if it isn't old Fat Chance and Prissy Pete, come back to go to School with us again."
I stopped dead in savage delight. So, Karl Pig-face was still here. Of course he was still here, along
with all his fellow tormentors. He had not seen my face. Slowly I put the broad black bat upon my head,
turned to face them where they hovered in the side corridor, lips wet and slack with anticipation of
another bullying. I was only a shadow to them where I stood. I shook Chance's restraining hand from my
shoulder, moved toward the lantern which hung always just at that turning.
"Yes, Karl," I whispered in Dora's voice. "It is Peter come to School again, but not with you."
Stepping into the light on the last word, letting them see the death's-head mask, hearing the indrawn
breath, the retching gulp which was all Karl could get out. Then they were gone, yelping away like
whipped pups, away to the corridors and attics. I laughed silently, overcome.
"That wasn't nice," said Chance sanctimoniously.
"Aaah, Chance." I poked him in his purse, where the merchants' coins still clinked fulsomely. "We
have our little failings, don't we? It was you who told me to travel as a Necromancer, Chance. I cannot
help it if it scares small boys witless." My feelings of sick sweet nostalgia had turned to ones of delighted
vengeance. Karl might think twice before bullying a smaller boy again. I planned how, before I left, I
might drive the point home.
In order to reach Mertyn's tower room we had to climb past the schoolrooms, the rooms of the
other Masters. Gamesmaster Gervaise met us on the landing outside his own classroom, and he knew me
at once, seeming totally unawed by the mask.
"Peter, my boy. Mertyn said you'd be coming to visit. He's down in the garden, talking to a
tradesman just now. Come in and have wine with me while you wait for him. Come in, Chance. I have
some of your favorite here to drown the dust of the road. I remember we had trouble keeping it when
you were here, Chance. No less trouble now, but it's I who drink it." He led us through the cold
classroom where the Gamemodel swam in its haze of blue to his own sitting room, warm with firelight and
sun. "Brrrr." He shivered as he shut the door. "The older I get, the harder it becomes to bear the cold of
the game model. But you remember. All you boys have chapped hands and faces from it."
I shivered in sympathy and remembrance, accepting the wine he poured. "You always had us work
with the model when it was snowing out, Master Gervaise. And in the heat of summer, we never did."
"Well, that seems perverse, doesn't it? It wasn't for that reason, of course. In the summer it's simply
too difficult to keep the models cold. We lock them away down in the ice cellar. It will soon be too warm
this year. Not like last season where winter went on almost to midsummer." He poured wine for himself,
sat before the fire. "Now, tell me what you've been doing since Bannerwell. Mertyn told me all about
that." He shook his head regretfully. "Pity about Mandor. Never trusted him, though. Too pretty."
I swirled my glass, watching the wine swirl into a spiral and climb the edges. "I haven't been doing
much."
"No Games?" He seemed surprised.
"No, sir. There is very little Gaming in the Bright Demesne."