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

me to do here?"

"Let's go back," I told him shortly.

It took me awhile to regain my composure. We were about halfway back
before I could trust myself to start asking questions.

"Where are you from?" It was banal, but it was a place to start.

"Originally, you mean? That's sort of hard to say. I move around a
lot. I'm not very welcome in most places. I'm used to it, though.
It's been going on since the day I was born."

"Oh?"

"I gather that my mother's people had a fairly simple way to rid
themselves of defectives. As soon as they laid eyes on me, they took
me out in the woods and left me there to starve--or to provide some
wolf with a light snack. My mother was a sentimentalist, though, so
she used to sneak out of the village to nurse me."

And I thought my childhood had been hard.

"She stopped coming a year or so after I'd learned to walk, though,"

he added in a deliberately harsh tone.

"Died, I suppose--or they caught her sneaking out and killed her. I
was on my own after that."

"How did you survive?"

"Does it really matter?" There was a distant pain in his eyes,
however.

"There are all sorts of things to eat in a forest--if you're not too
particular. Vultures and ravens manage fairly well. I learned to
watch for them. I found out early on that anyplace you see a vulture,
there's probably something to eat. You get used to the smell after a
while."

"You're an animal!" I exclaimed.

"We're all animals, Belgarath." It was the first time he'd used my
name.

"I'm better at it than most, because I've had more practice. Now, do
you suppose we could talk about something else?"

CHAPTER FOUR