"Tad Williams - The War of the Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

The tall, lean figure in the spidersilk suit pressed a button on the side of his desk and spoke into the air.
The winds of Faerie carried his words to all those who needed to hear them, throughout the great city
and all across the troubled land, summoning his allies and tributaries to the first council of the next war
of the Flowers.


Part One
GOODNIGHT NOBODY
1 CLOUDS
Theo felt a small flutter of guilt as he turned the cell phone back on, especially when he noticed he'd left
it off for more than two hours, and was relieved to see that there were no messages. He'd only meant to
flick it off for a few minutes, just to make sure there were no interruptions while they were tuning тАФ the
young guys, especially Kris, the guitarist, got really pissy about that тАФ but things had started happening
and he'd forgotten.
Johnny stepped over the guitar cases spread across the living room rug like discarded cocoons and slid
open the door to join him outside. The fog had come down the hill while they had been practicing; the
fenced patio seemed an island in a cold, misty sea.
Jesus, San Francisco in March. He should have brought his jacket out. Might as well be in Minnesota.
"Hey," he asked Johnny, "got a smoke?"


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The drummer made a face and patted his shirt pocket, then his pants pockets. He was small but he had
long, strong arms. With his paunch and his shaggy but balding head, the chest hair climbing out of his T-
shirt collars, he always made Theo think of the soulful chimpanzees in that Englishwoman's
documentaries.
When Johnny found the pack at last, he shook out one for Theo, then one for himself and lit it. "Man,
you never have your own."
"Never buy any. I only smoke when I'm playing."
Johnny shook his head. "That's so typical, Vilmos тАФ you always get the easy road. I'm an addict, you
only smoke when you want to тАФ like, when you're around me. I'll probably be the one who gets cancer,
too."
"Probably." Theo considered calling home, but he was going to be leaving in a few minutes anyway.
Still, Cat was very deep into I'm-pregnant-and-I-want-to-know-where-you-are modeтАж He felt another
ripple of guilt and couldn't decide what to do. He stared at the phone, as perplexed as if it were an
artifact of a vanished civilization.
"Your old lady leave a message?" Johnny was the only one in the band who was Theo's age but he
talked like he was even older, unashamedly using words like "chicks" and "hip." Theo had actually
heard him say "out of sight" once, but he had sworn later he was being ironic. Johnny was also the only
one who'd even understand something as archaic as phoning home. Kris and Dano and Morgan were in
that early-twenties stage where they just paged their girlfriends to announce when they were dropping by
after practice to have sex.
"Nah. I gotta get going, anyway."
Johnny flipped his cigarette over the fence and out into the street, a tiny shooting star. "Just listen to the
playback on 'Feast,' first. You don't want Kris's asshole to get any more puckered than it already is, do
you?" He smiled deep in his beard and started peeling off the athletic tape he wrapped around his
knuckles before playing because he bashed them against the rims so hard. Theo thought that he'd rather
have scars than the pink, hairless patches that striped Johnny's hairy hands, but Johnny was a seemingly