Robert Carter - Whitemantle

In cellars as dank as dungeons he had found the carefully arranged shards of a broken mirror, things stolen, things lost, things entombed under stone flags. Equerries and under-chamberlains were disturbed from their beds at midnight. High palace officials were roused up in the misty dawn as the wizard came in bearing in his hands the bones of a long-dead prince, to mutter and dance and run his new-found wand over chest and chimney-breast alike. And finally, in a tower occupied by no one at all, Gwydion had felt his way forward with remorseless care, for in a solitary cell at the top of a stair Maskull had kept his workshop of vile creation.

The sorcerer’s chamber was not without subtle defences. Magic was set, ready to snare the unwary. Walls that were not walls, seemingly thin air that was. And so Gwydion halted his attack. He let his investigation flow around the problem, then proceeded crabwise. At last, he went at it like the village worthy who goes to the local well, draws out on the end of long tongs the wriggling, spitting young of a water drake and dashes out its brains against a rock. A huge wasps’ nest was smoked out and taken down from the roof space, and when the wizard broke it open he found it to contain a human skull. Inside that was a dripping honeycomb that Gwydion sealed in a great jar.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.