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

They made much of me, and most of them wept the first time they saw me.
They would sit by the hour and just look at me, which I found
disconcerting, to say the very least. They fed me and pampered me and
provided me with what might be called luxurious quarters--if a tent
could ever be described as luxurious. The tent had been empty, and I
discovered that there were many empty tents in their encampment. Within
a month or two I was able to find out why. Scarcely a week went by
when at least one of them didn't die. As I said, they were all very
old. Have you any idea of how depressing it is to live in a place
where there's a perpetual funeral going on?

Winter was coming on, however, and I had a place to sleep and a fire to
keep me warm, and the old people kept me well fed, so I decided that I
could stand a little depression. I made up my mind, though, that with
the first hint of spring, I'd be gone.

I made no particular effort to learn their language that winter and
picked up only a few words. The most continually repeated among them
were

"Gorim" and

"UL," which seemed to be names of some sort and were almost always
spoken in tones of profoundest regret.

In addition to feeding me, the old people provided me with clothing; my
own hadn't been very good in the first place and had become badly worn
during the course of my journey. This involved no great sacrifice on
their part, since a community in which there are two or three funerals
every few weeks is bound to have spare clothes lying about.

When the snow melted and the frost began to seep out of the ground, I
quietly began to make preparations to leave. I stole food--a little at
a time to avoid suspicion--and hid it in my tent. I filched a rather
nice wool cloak from the tent of one of the recently deceased and
picked up a few other useful items here and there. I scouted the
surrounding area carefully and found a place where I could ford the
large river just to the west of the encampment. Then, with my escape
route firmly in mind, I settled down to wait for the last of winter to
pass.

As is usual in the early spring, we had a couple of weeks of fairly
steady rain, so I still waited, although my impatience to be gone was
becoming almost unbearable. During the course of that winter, that
peculiar compulsion that had nagged at me since I'd left Gara had
subtly altered. Now I seemed to be drawn southward instead of to the
west.

The rains finally let up, and the spring sun seemed warm enough to make