"Zelazny, Roger - Changeling Saga - 02 - Madwand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zelazny Roger)

"His words about forcing the wards--do they mean anything at all to you?"
"Not a thing."
"A good sorcerer would find some way to learn it from the materials at hand, I'm sure."
"I'm not. Those things seem extremely potent. As for your own abilities, you seem to have come pretty far without training. I'd give a lot to be able to pull that book trick--with, say, someone's jewelry. Where'd you get it from, anyway?"
Pol smiled.
"I didn't want to leave it lying around, so I bound it with a golden strand and ordered it to retreat into one of those placeless places between the worlds, as I saw them arrayed on my journey here. It vanished then, but whenever I wish to continue reading it I merely draw upon the thread and summon it."
"Gods! You could do that with a suit of armor, a rack of weapons, a year's supply of food, your entire library, for that matter! You can make yourself invincible!"
Pol shook his head.
"Afraid not," he said. "The book and the jumble-box are all I've been keeping there, because I wouldn't want either to fall into anyone else's hands. If I were traveling, I could add my guitar. Much more, though, and it would become too great a burden. Their mass somehow gets added to my own. It's as if I'm carrying around whatever I send through."
"So that's where the box has gotten to. I remember your locating it, that day we went back to Anvil Mountain ..."
"Yes. I almost wish I hadn't."
"You couldn't really hope to recover his body or your scepter from that crater."
"No, that's not what I meant. It was just seeing all that--waste--that bothered me. I--"
He slammed his fist against the arm of his chair.
"Damn those statues! It sometimes seems they were behind it all! If I could just get them to--Hell!"
He drained his glass and went to refill it.
The sensation ebbed. I did not like that experience. The room and its inhabitants were now tiny within the cloud of myself, and more uncertainties were now present: I did not know what it was that had caused me pain, nor how it produced that effect. I felt that I should learn these things, so as to avoid it in the future. I did not know how to proceed.
I also felt that it might be useful for me to learn how to produce this effect in others, so that I could cause them to leave me alone. How might I do this? If there were a means of contact it would seem that it could go either way, once the technique were mastered....
Again, the stirring of memory. But I was distracted. Someone approached the castle. It was a solitary human of male gender. I was aware of the distinction because of my familiarity with the girl Nora who had dwelled within for a time before returning to her own people. This man wore a brown cloak and dark clothing. He came drifting out of the northwest, mounted upon one of the lesser kin of the dragons who dwell below. His hair was yellow, and in places white. He wore a short blade. He circled. He could not miss the sign of the one lighted room. He began to descend, silent as a leaf or an ash across the air. I believed that he would land at the far end of the courtyard, out of sight of the library window.
Yes.
Within the room the men were talking, about the battle at the place called Anvil Mountain, where Pol destroyed his step-brother, Mark Marakson. Pol, I gather, is a sorcerer and Mark was something else, similar but opposite. A sorcerer is one who manipulates forces as I saw Pol do with the statue, and the book. Now, dimly, I recalled another sorcerer. His name was Det.
"...You've been brooding over those figures too long," Mouseglove was saying. "If there were an easy answer, you'd have found it by now."
"I know," Pol replied. "That's why I'm looking for something more complicated."
"I don't have any special knowledge of magic," Mouseglove said, "but it looks to me as if the problem does not lie completely in that area."
"What do you mean?"
"Facts, man. You haven't enough plain, old-fashioned information to be sure what you're up against here, what it is that you should be doing. You've had a couple of months to ransack this library, to play every magical game you can think of with the stiff dolls. If the answer were to be found that way, you'd have turned it up. It's just not here. You are going to have to look somewhere else."
"Where?'" Pol asked.
"If I knew that, I'd have told you before now. I've been away from the world I knew for over twenty years. It must have changed a bit in that time. So I'm hardly one to be giving directions. But you know I'd only intended to remain here until I'd recovered from my injury. I've been feeling fine for some time now. I've been loathe to leave, though, because of you. I don't like seeing you drive yourself against a crazy mystery day after day. There are enough half-mad wizards in the world, and I think that's where you may be heading--not to mention the possibility of your setting off something which may simply destroy you on the spot. I think you ought to get out, get away from the problem for a time. You'd said you wanted to see more of this world. Do it now. Come with me--tomorrow. Who knows? You may even come across some of the information you seek in your travels."
"I don't know ..." Pol began. "I do want to go, but--tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow."
"Where would we be heading?"
"Over to the coast, I was thinking, and then north along it. You can pick up a lot of news in port cities--"
Pol raised his hand and cocked his head. Mouseglove nodded and rose to his feet.
"Your warning system still working?" Mouseglove whispered.
Pol nodded and turned toward the door.
"Then it can't be any--"
The sound came again, and with it the form of a light-haired man appeared in the doorway, smiling.
"Good evening, Pol Detson," he stated, raising his left hand and jerking it through a series of quick movements, "and good-bye."
Pol fell to his knees, his face suddenly bright red. Mouseglove rounded the desk. Picking up one of the statuettes and raising it like a club, he moved toward the brown-cloaked stranger.
The man made a sudden movement with his right hand and the thief was halted, spun and slammed back against the wall to his left. The figurine fell from his grip as he slumped to the floor.
As this occurred, Pol raised his hands beside his cheeks and then gestured outward. His face began returning to its normal color as he climbed to his feet.
"I might ask, 'Why?' " he said, his own hands moving now, rotating in opposite directions.
The stranger continued to smile and made a sweeping movement with one hand, as if brushing away an insect.
"And I might answer you," said the other, "but it would take some coercion."
"Very well," said Pol. "I'm willing."
He felt his dragonmark throb and the air was alive with strands. Reaching out, he seized a fistful, shook them and snapped them like a lash toward the other's face.
The man reached out and caught them as they arrived. A numbing shock traveled up Pol's arm and it fell limply to his side. The density of the strands between them increased to a level he had never before witnessed, partly obscuring his view of his opponent.
Pol made a large sweeping motion with his left hand, gathering in a ball of them. Immediately, he willed it to fire and cast the blazing orb toward the other.
The man deflected it with the back of his right hand and then flung both arms upward and outward.
The light in the room began to throb. The air became so filled with the lines of power that they seemed to merge, becoming huge, swimming, varicolored patterns obscuring much of the prospect, including the stranger.