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

And then, because I was still very young and much impressed with my
recent accomplishment, I turned to a winter-dried bush and spoke to it
fervently.

"Bloom," I said, and the bush quite suddenly produced a single flower.
It wasn't much of a flower, I'll admit, but it was the best that I
could do at the time. I was still fairly new at this. I plucked it
and offered it to him.

"For thee, Master," I said, "because I love thee." I don't believe I'd
ever used the word "love" before, and it's become the center of my
whole life. Isn't it odd how we make these simple little
discoveries?

And he took my crooked little flower and held it between his hands.

"I thank thee, my son," he said. It was the first time he'd ever
called me that.

"And this flower shall be thy first lesson. I would have thee examine
it most carefully and tell me all that thou canst perceive of it. Set
aside thine axe and thy broom, Belgarath. This flower is now thy
task."

And that task took me twenty years, as I recall. Each time I came to
my Master with the flower that never wilted nor faded--how I grew to
hate that flower!--and told him what I'd learned, he would say,

"Is that all, my son?" And, crushed, I'd go back to my study of that
silly little flower.

In time my distaste for it grew less. The more I studied it, the
better I came to know it, and I eventually grew fond of it.

Then one day my Master suggested that I might learn more about it if I
burned it and studied its ashes. I refused indignantly.

"And why not, my son?" he asked me.

"Because it is dear to me, Master," I said in a tone probably more firm
than I'd intended.

"Dear?" he asked.

"I love the flower, Master! I will not destroy it!"

"Thou art stubborn, Belgarath," he noted.

"Did it truly take thee twenty years to admit thine affection for this