Читаем The Light Fantastic полностью

It was louder now, a crisp rhythm like someone eating celery very fast.

‘I’ll send up a flare,’ said the leader. He picked up a handful of snow, rolled it into a ball, threw it up into the air and ignited it with a stream of octarine fire from his fingertips. There was a brief, fierce blue glare.

There was silence. Then another wizard said, ‘You daft bugger, I can’t see a thing now.’

That was the last thing they heard before something fast, hard and noisy cannoned into them out of the darkness and vanished into the night.

When they dug one another out of the snow all they could find was a tight pressed trail of little footprints. Hundreds of little footprints, all very close together and heading across the snow as straight as a searchlight.


‘A necromancer!’ said Rincewind.

The old woman across the fire shrugged and pulled a pack of greasy cards from some unseen pocket.

Despite the deep frost outside, the atmosphere inside the yurt was like a blacksmith’s armpit and the wizard was already sweating heavily. Horse dung made a good fuel, but the Horse People had a lot to learn about air conditioning, starting with what it meant.

Bethan leaned sideways.

‘What’s neck romance?’ she whispered.

‘Necromancy. Talking to the dead,’ he explained.

‘Oh,’ she said, vaguely disappointed.

They had dined on horse meat, horse cheese, horse black pudding, horse d’oeuvres and a thin beer that Rincewind didn’t want to speculate about. Cohen (who’d ad horse soup) explained that the Horse Tribes of the Hubland steppes were born in the saddle, which Rincewind considered was a gynaecological impossibility, and they were particularly adept at natural magic, since life on the open steppe makes you realise how neatly the sky fits the land all around the edges and this naturally inspires the mind to deep thoughts like ‘Why?’, ‘When?’ and ‘Why don’t we try beef for a change?’

The chieftain’s grandmother nodded at Rincewind and spread the cards in front of her.

Rincewind, as it has already been noted, was the worst wizard on the Disc: no other spells would stay in his mind once the Spell had lodged in there, in much the same way that fish don’t hang around in a pike pool. But he still had his pride, and wizards don’t like to see women perform even simple magic. Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it...

‘Anyway, I don’t believe in Caroc cards,’ he muttered, ‘All that stuff about it being the distilled wisdom of the universe is a load of rubbish.’

The first card, smoke-yellowed and age-crinkled, was...

It should have been The Star. But instead of the familiar round disc with crude little rays, it had become a tiny red dot. The old woman muttered and scratched at the card with a fingernail, then looked sharply at Rincewind.

‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said.

She turned up the Importance of Washing the Hands, the Eight of Octograms, the Dome of the Sky, the Pool of Night, the Four of Elephants, the Ace of Turtles, and—Rincewind had been expecting it—Death.

And something was wrong with Death, too. It should have been a fairly realistic drawing of Death on his white horse, and indeed He was still there. But the sky was red lit, and coming over a distant hill was a tiny figure. barely visible by the light of the horsefat lamps.

Rincewind didn’t have to identify it, because behind it was a box on hundreds of little legs.

The Luggage would follow its owner anywhere.

Rincewind looked across the tent to Twoflower, a pale shape on a pile of horsehides.

‘He’s really dead?’ he said. Cohen translated for the old woman, who shook her head. She reached down to a small wooden chest beside her and rummaged around in a collection of bags and bottles until she found a tiny green bottle which she tipped into Rincewind’s beer. He looked at it suspiciously.

‘She shays it’s sort of medicine,’ said Cohen. ‘I should drink it if I were you, theshe people get a bit upshet if you don’t accshept hoshpitality.’

‘It’s not going to blow my head off?’ said Rincewind.

‘She shays it’s esshential you drink it.’

‘Well, if you’re sure it’s okay. It can’t make the beer taste any worse.’

He took a swig, aware of all eyes on him.

‘Um,’ he said. ‘Actually, it’s not at all ba—’


Something picked him up and threw him into the air. Except that in another.sense he was still sitting by the fire—he could see himself there, a dwindling figure in the circle of firelight that was rapidly getting smaller. The toy figures around it were looking intently at his body. Except for the old woman. She was looking right up at, him, and grinning.


The Circle Sea ’s senior wizards were not grinning at all. They were becoming aware that they were confronted with something entirely new and fearsome: a young man on the make.

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Сердце дракона. Том 9
Сердце дракона. Том 9

Он пережил войну за трон родного государства. Он сражался с монстрами и врагами, от одного имени которых дрожали души целых поколений. Он прошел сквозь Море Песка, отыскал мифический город и стал свидетелем разрушения осколков древней цивилизации. Теперь же путь привел его в Даанатан, столицу Империи, в обитель сильнейших воинов. Здесь он ищет знания. Он ищет силу. Он ищет Страну Бессмертных.Ведь все это ради цели. Цели, достойной того, чтобы тысячи лет о ней пели барды, и веками слагали истории за вечерним костром. И чтобы достигнуть этой цели, он пойдет хоть против целого мира.Даже если против него выступит армия – его меч не дрогнет. Даже если император отправит легионы – его шаг не замедлится. Даже если демоны и боги, герои и враги, объединятся против него, то не согнут его железной воли.Его зовут Хаджар и он идет следом за зовом его драконьего сердца.

Кирилл Сергеевич Клеванский

Фантастика / Героическая фантастика / Фэнтези / Самиздат, сетевая литература / Боевая фантастика