Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 71

Pekka gave him a sweet smile. "Any weather with you out in it, Master, would soon become indecent."

Siuntio coughed. Fernao chuckled. Ilmarinen guffawed. "That all depends on whether the experiment goes up or down," he said.

Siuntio coughed again, more sharply this time. "Let us please remember the high seriousness of the work in which we are engaged," he said.

"Why?" Ilmarinen asked. "The work will go on just the same either way. We'll have more fun if we have more fun, though."

"We are also more likely to make a mistake if we take things lightly," Siuntio said. "Considering the forces we are trying to manipulate, a mistake would be something less than desirable."

"Enough," Pekka said before the elderly and distinguished mages could get any further into their schoolboy bickering. "One of the mistakes we make is arguing among ourselves."

"Quite right." Siuntio nodded, then shook a finger in Ilmarinen's direction. "You should pay attention to Mistress Pekka's wisdom, for she-"

Now Fernao coughed. "It pains me to tell you this, Master Siuntio," he said in his careful Kaunian, "but you are still arguing."

"I am?" Siuntio sounded astonished. Then he seemed to consider. "Why, so I am." He dipped his head to Fernao. "My thanks for pointing it out; I confess I hadn't noticed."

Pekka believed him. He was just the sort of man who might do such a thing without paying much attention to what he was doing. She said, "When we go out today- or tomorrow, if we do not get the chance to do it today- we have to remind the secondary sorcerers to bend every effort to keeping all the animals hale while we perform the primary incantations. Having one of the rats in the younger group die before the spell was complete ruined a day's work and more."

"As opposed to ruining a good part of the landscape," Ilmarinen said.

"We have already done that," Pekka said. "Even after the blizzards come and pour snow over the latest hole in the ground, you can still see the scars of what we have done." She shook her head. "And to think all this started with an acorn disappearing."

"More than an acorn disappearing nowadays," Fernao said, "but that will be the experiment the textbooks of the future mention."

"Textbooks," Ilmarinen said with the scorn of a man who'd written a good many. "The permanent written record of what the world doesn't remember quite the right way."

"I want to go out to the site," Pekka said. "I want to go into the blockhouse and cast the spells. We have come so far now. We need to go on."

"We need to pluck more fresh, green grass from the latest crater," Ilmarinen said, throwing oil on the fire. "We need to see what we can do about that, and we need to see if anything smarter than a blade of grass can come through unchanged." He eyed Fernao, then shook his head. "No, you wouldn't make a proper experimental subject there."

"True," Fernao agreed imperturbably. "I am not green."