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

"Dost thou require anything?" he asked.

"I am unfamiliar with thy kind."

"A little food, perhaps," I replied.

"I haven't eaten for two days. And a warm place to sleep, if you
wouldn't mind." I thought it might not be a bad idea to stay on the
good side of this strange old man, so I hurried on.

"I won't be much trouble, Master, and I can make myself useful in
payment."

It was an artful little speech. I'd learned during my months with the
Tolnedrans how to make myself agreeable to people in a position to do
me favors.

"Master?" he said, and laughed, a sound so cheerful that it made me
almost want to dance. Where had I heard that laugh before?

"I am not thy Master, boy," he said. Then he laughed again, and my
heart sang with the splendor of his mirth.

"Let us see to this thing of food. What dost thou require?"

"A little bread perhaps--not too stale, if it's all right."

"Bread? Only bread? Surely, boy, thy stomach is fit for more than
bread. If thou wouldst make thyself useful--as thou hast promised--we
must nourish thee properly. Consider, boy. Think of all the things
thou hast eaten in thy life. What in all the world would most surely
satisfy this vast hunger of thine?"

I couldn't even say it. Before my eyes swam the visions of smoking
roasts, of fat geese swimming in their own gravy, of heaps of
fresh-baked bread and rich, golden butter, of pastries in thick cream,
of cheese and dark-brown ale, of fruits and nuts and salt to savor it
all. The vision was so real that it even seemed that I could smell
it.

And he who sat by the glowing fire that burned, it seemed, air alone,
laughed, and again my heart sang.

"Turn, boy," he said, "and eat thy fill."

I turned, and there on a table, which I hadn't even seen before, lay
everything I had imagined. No wonder I could smell it! A hungry boy
doesn't ask where the food comes from--he eats. And so I ate. I ate
until my stomach groaned. Through the sound of my eating I could hear