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

reconsider our arrangement. There isn't really very much to do when
winter keeps one housebound, but warmer weather brings with it the
opportunity for heavier and more tedious tasks. If things turned too
unpleasant, I could always pick up and leave.

There was something peculiar about that notion, though. The compulsion
that had come over me at Gara seemed gone now. I don't know that I
really thought about it in any specific way. I just seemed to notice
that it was gone and shrugged it off. Maybe I just thought I'd
outgrown it.

It seems to me that I shrugged off a great deal that first winter.

I paid very little attention, for example, to the fact that my Master
seemed to have no visible means of support. He didn't keep cattle or
sheep or even chickens, and there were no sheds or outbuildings in the
vicinity of his tower. I couldn't even find his storeroom. I knew
there had to be one somewhere, because the meals he prepared were
always on the table when I grew hungry. Oddly, the fact that I never
once saw him cooking didn't seem particularly strange to me. Not even
the fact that I never once saw him eat anything seemed strange. It was
almost as if my natural curiosity--and believe me, I can be very
curious--had been somehow put to sleep.

I had absolutely no idea of what he did during that long winter. It
seemed to me that he spent a great deal of time just looking at a plain
round rock. He didn't speak very often, but I talked enough for both
of us. I've always been fond of the sound of my own voice--or had you
noticed that?

My continual chatter must have driven him to distraction, because one
evening he rather pointedly asked me why I didn't go read something.

I knew about reading, of course. Nobody in Gara had known how, but I'd
seen Tolnedrans doing it--or pretending to. It seemed a little silly
to me at the time. Why take the trouble to write a letter to somebody
who lives two houses over? If it's important, just step over and tell
him about it.

"I don't know how to read, Master," I confessed.

He actually seemed startled by that.

"Is this truly the case, boy?" he asked me.

"I had thought that the skill was instinctive amongst thy kind."

I wished that he'd quit talking about "my kind" as if I were a member
of some obscure species of rodent or insect.