"Books - David Eddings - Belgarath the Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

Trust the Tolnedrans to invent money. I found the whole idea
fascinating.

Here was something small enough to be portable and yet of enormous
value. Someone who's just stolen a chair or a table or a horse is
fairly conspicuous. Money, on the other hand, can't be identified as
someone else's property once it's in your pocket.

Unfortunately, Tolnedrans are very possessive about their money, and it
was in Tol Malin that I first heard someone shout

"Stop, thief!" I left town rather quickly at that point.

I hope you realize that I wouldn't be making such an issue of some of
my boyhood habits except for the fact that my daughter can be very
tiresome about my occasional relapses. I'd just like for people to see
my side of it for a change. Given my circumstances, did I really have
any choice?

Oddly enough, I encountered that same humorous old fellow again about
five miles outside Tol Malin.

"Well, boy," he greeted me.

"I see that you're still moving along westward."

"There was a little misunderstanding back in Tol Malin," I replied
defensively.

"I thought it might be best for me to leave."

He laughed knowingly, and for some reason his laughter made my whole
day seem brighter. He was a very ordinary-looking old fellow with
white hair and beard, but his deep blue eyes seemed strangely out of
place in his wrinkled face. They were very wise, but they didn't seem
to be the eyes of an old man. They also seemed to see right through
all my excuses and lame explanations.

"Well, hop up again, boy," he told me.

"We still both seem to be going in the same direction."

We traveled across the lands of the Tolnedrans for the next several
weeks, moving steadily westward. This was before those people
developed their obsession with straight, well-maintained roads, and
what we followed were little more than wagon tracks that meandered
along the course of least resistance across the meadows.

Like just about everybody else in the world in those days, the