"Patricia White - A Wizard Scorned" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Patricia)

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A Wizard Scorned
Patricia White

Another one for you, Bill

Copyright 1998, Patricia White
ISBN: 1-58200-021-2

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no
relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even
distantly inspired by any individual(s) known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure
invention.


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Prologue|1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17 |18 |19 |20 |21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29 |
Epilogue


Prologue

The huge cat stretched, yawned widely, showing an impressive set of fangs, and rearranged his wealth
of sleek, black fur, and an even sleeker wealth of underlying muscle, on the dark, sun-warmed surface of
an old lava flow. He did it all, and with great deliberation, before he even attempted to answer the young
man's question.
"Since, this once, you have the brain to ask my advice before you end up fire-dancing in your
bare-feet, I'll give it. Youth, they say, is curable by time and experience; if rash acts don't do you in
beforehand. But, it would seem to me, and my motives may not be the same as yours, that you'd be
making a very large mistake if you do not accept the task these men have offered you. You have the
knowledge and the magic to see it to its end."
The cat's words were plain in his mind, as they always were. The wizard took a deep breath, tried to
marshal and somehow dispel his doubts, to rationalize his fear that the task was beyond his doing. That
the men who had offered him gold had somehow twisted their words, had let their dreams and needs
speak louder than the truth. He couldn't.
To others, Sojourner, the great cat that must forever wander, might be a myth, a winter tale told when
the fire was burned to ashes and embers and the wind sang a sad lament outside the walls. But not to
Will. Will knew the truth; or as much of the truth that could be known. And if this deed was important to
Sojourner, then it had to be-- if Will could make it so.
"Your quest?" Will asked, leaning against the side of the stone, pushing his fingers through his
disordered hair, trying to fight off the memories Sojourner, probably without malice but certainly with
purpose, had invoked. It was a useless battle.
The hot sun blazed in the summer sky, but Will shivered with another cold. The icy cold of a small boy
who stood in the snow and watched, young and helpless, tears of sorrow freezing on his gaunt face, as
his world ended in a roaring fire and the screams of his dying parents. And the great, silver-eyed cat,