Wizard of the Pigeons

Начало книги

ON THE FAR WESTERN SHORE of a northern continent there was once a harbor city called Seattle. Jt did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of nun, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it “The Emerald City” for the greenness of its foliage. And the other thing it boasted was a great friendliness that fell upon strangers like its rain, but with more warmth. In that city, there dwelt a wizard.

Not that folk recognized him as a wizard, for even in those days, wizards were becoming rarer with each passing year. He lived a simple life upon the streets of the city, passing among me folk like the wind passes among the flowers, unseen but not unfelt. He was known, to the few who knew him, simply as Wizard.

Little was known of his past, but atoning for this lack was a plenitude of rumors about it. Some said he had been an engineer and a warrior who bad returned from some far battle with memories too fearsome to tolerate. And some said no, that he had been a scholar and among those who had refused to go to that far strife, and that was why he dwelt nameless and homeless in me streets. And some said he was older than the city itself, and others that he was newly arrived, only a day or so ago. But what folk said of him mattered little, for it was what he did that was important. Or didn’t do, as Cassie would have quickly pointed out.‘

Читать дальше →