Odnośniki
- Indeks
- Alan Burt Akers [Dray Prescot 14] Krozar of Kregen (pdf)
- Debra Dean Confessions of a Fallen Woman (pdf)(1)
- Alan Drew Gardens of Water (pdf)
- Dean R. Koontz W okowach lodu
- Beastchild Dean R. Koontz
- Foster Siblings 2.1 Snowfall Cameron Dane
- 08 MOMENT MAGNETYCZNY ELEKTRONU
- Alan Dean Foster Alien 01 Alien
- Alan Dean Foster Commonwealth 04 Voyage To The City of the Dead
- Joel Rosenberg 04 The Heir Apparent
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- slowacja.opx.pl
tapped it against the wood. It made a soft clicking noise. On the side was the
legend Made in Hong Kong. Handling it gingerly, he descended to the floor and
dropped it into the open hat. It vanished.
Alan Dean Foster
306
Then he took a deep breath and did the hardest thing he'd ever done in his
life. He picked up the hat. Carrying it carefully in his right hand, he walked
over to the window nearby and threw it as far as he could. It sailed out into
the night and he watched it fall. When it hit the water it was too light to
make an audible splash. Either it would sink or the current would carry it
into the river that drained the Lake of
Sorrowful Pearls, and the river would take it out to the Glittergeist Sea to
sink in thousands of fathoms of sunless, specterless water.
He found himself feeling sorry for Markle Kratz-
meier. But not for Markus the Ineluctable.
Something creaked behind him. He jumped.
"You okay, mate?" inquired a hesitant voice. Mudge's face peeped uncertainly
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around the rim of the door.
Jon-Tom relaxed. "It's all right, Mudge. It's all over. You can come in now."
He swallowed. "Everyone can come in now."
"Right, mate." But Mudge made a thorough sur-
vey of the empty throne room before he entered.
Weapons drawn, the rest of the band rushed in around him.
Memaw crossed her arms over her chest. "Brrri
Young man, it's freezing in here. What happened?"
"Markus unintentionally called up an old friend of his. They went away
together." Suddenly he was very tired, searched for something to sit on. The
throne was out of the question, so he chose a pile of richly embroidered
cushions stacked in a corner.
Trendavi waddled over to him. "What of our city?"
"It's been restored to you. You got it back." Trendavi accepted this
information solemnly. Then he bowed before Jon-Tom, who was too exhausted to
tell him not to, and went off to tell the other members of the
Quorum.
Opiode had paced the length of the room, sniffing
THE MoJcswr or TUX MAOicxiur 307
at the chilled air. Now he peered down at the speltsinger out of wise, knowing
eyes.
"Death has been in this place. You called it forth?"
"No, not me. Markus did it- I don't think he knew what he was doing when he
did it. See, he'd died in the other world. My world. He escaped by being
thrown through to here. Death had been looking for him ever since."
"So in his anger and greed he called up his own fate," Opiode murmured.
"Justice." He sniffed again.
"There has been much magic worked here this night.
Great magic."
"I don't know how great it was" Jon-Tom rubbed his face with both hands "but 1
feel like I've just had the shit stomped out of me by an angry elephant."
Quorly put a comforting paw on hisr shoulder.
** 'Tis done with, spellsinger. 'Tis all over now."
A voice from across the room drew their eyes.
"Hey, you lot, look at me!" Mudge was sitting on the throne, his short legs a
foot above the floor, both arms resting on the carved armrests. "Oi, I'm
Emper-
or o' Quasequa, 1 am, and you louts can all pay me
*omage." He grinned down at Splitch. "Ladies first.
o' course."
Jon-Tom spoke casually. "That is precisely where
Markus was sitting when Death itself took him."
Mudge's legs abruptly stopped swinging. "You don't say. If that's supposed to
scare me, why, it don't." He hopped down from the seat. " 'Tis a mite chilly
up there, though. Not really to me taste." He retreated in haste.
"Then there's nothing more for us to worry about,"
said Memaw.
"Well, there is one thing," Jon-Tom mused. "You all seem to have forgotten
that we have a revolution-
minded dragon running loose in the Quorumate's tower levels."
Alan Dean Porter
308
"Is that a problem?'* Domurmur frowned. "If he is your friend, can't you tell
him to leave us in peace?"
"He'll leave you in pieces if he finds out what kind of government you're
running. You're going to have to move to eliminate bribery and corruption,
stamp out the blatant buying of public office."
Selryndi sputtered a reply. "But that's impossible!
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How else do you govern?"
Jon-Tom grinned up at him. "I should let Falameezar instruct you, but I'll
talk to him and see if we can't work out some kind of compromise that will
satisfy all the concerned parties."
"We thank you," a relieved Trendavi said humbly.
So Falameezar was permitted to run a political
reeducation center on the shore of Isle Quase, and the citizens were taught
not to run in fear from his presence. Before too much time went by he was no
longer frightening them, only boring them to death with his droning
recitations of Marxist ideology. De-
spite his threats they began to drift away, and even the city troops couldn't
force them to stay and listen.
As Cherjal the innkeeper put it one day, "I'd rather bee fried than forced to
leesten to that garbage anymore!"
So Falameezar swam off one evening in search of more willing converts, bidding
Jon-Tom and his friends adieu, singing the "Internationale" as he disappeared
into a sunset which was, appropriately enough that evening, bright red.
It was the following night that Jon-Tom was com-
pelled to go with a group of grim-faced police to the end of an empty
municipal pier. At the far end of the pier was a large pile of fur. The pile
sported a bunch of eyes, many of which were closed or bloodshot, an
indistinguishable dutch of arms and legs, and reeked of liquor.
The sergeant of police was a three-foot-tall cavy, TBX VQMSMT OF THE MAGJCJAH
309
short and testy. He gestured at the pile. "These your friends?"
"Uh, yes sir."
"Well, do something with them. We had to shovel them out of the Capering
Gibbon tavern. They were being drunk and disorderly and obnoxious."
"Is that so oad? They did help save your city from the rule of Markus the
Ineluctable, you know."
"Aw, that was weeks ago," said the sergeant. "Since then they've busted up
half of what they helped save, insulted most of the ladies and some of the
males, parlied until all hours in quiet zones, and generally made a
spectacular nuisance of themselves."
One lump of fur wiggled out of the pile and focused rheumy eyes on the
sergeant. "Who're you callin' a nuisance, you sorry-lookin', worm-infested
lump o' snake crap?"
"Mudge, watch your mouth!" The otter twisted
'round to squint up at him.
"Hiya, mate! Say, where was you the other night?
You missed a hell of a party."
The cavy looked up at the much taller Jon-Tom, its nose twitching in distaste-
"This party has been going on for a month now, and the patience of the Quo-
rum is at its end. So in gratitude for what you have done for the city
ofQuasequa, it was decided to send you safely on your way." He gestured at the
pile of
'otters. "We dumped them here, more or less intact.
See that they don't come back."
/'I'm sorry if they've caused you any trouble,"
Jon-Tom told him apologetically. The cavy threw him a sideways glance.
"Trouble? Oh, no trouble, no trouble at all. At least three dozen of my best
people are stuck in infirmaries all around the city because of run-ins with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]