"David Eddings - Belgariad 2 - Queen of Sorcery" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

in time."

Wolf laughed. "Maybe it will make you feel better to know that it took your
Aunt ten years to get used to hers. I was forever telling her to put it
back on."

"I don't know that we need to go into that just now, father," Aunt Pol
answered coolly.

"Do you have one, too?" Garion asked the old man, suddenly curious about
it.

"Of course."

"Does it mean something that we all wear them?"

"It's a family custom, Garion," Aunt Pol told him in a tone that ended the
discussion. The fog eddied around them as a chill, damp breeze briefly
swirled through the ruins.

Garion sighed. "I wish Hettar would get here. I'd like to get away from
this place. It's like a graveyard."

"It wasn't always this way," Aunt Pol said very quietly.

"What was it like?"

"I was happy here. The walls were high, and the towers soared. We all
thought it would last forever." She pointed toward a rank patch of
winter-browned brambles creeping over the broken stones. "Over there was a
flower-filled garden where ladies in pale yellow dresses used to sit while
young men sang to them from beyond the garden wall. The voices of the young
men were very sweet, and the ladies would sigh and throw bright red roses
over the wall to them. And down that avenue was a marble-paved square where
the old men met to talk of forgotten wars and long-gone companions. Beyond
that there was a house with a terrace where I used to sit with friends in
the evening to watch the stars come out while a boy brought us chilled
fruit and the nightingales sang as if their hearts were breaking." Her
voice drifted off into silence. "But then the Asturians came," she went on,
and there was a different note then. "You'd be surprised at how little time
it takes to tear down something that took a thousand years to build."

"Don't worry at it, Pol," Wolf told her. "These things happen from time to
time. There's not a great deal we can do about it."

"I could have done something, father," she replied, looking off into the
ruins. "But you wouldn't let me, remember?"

"Do we have to go over that again, Pol?" Wolf asked in a pained voice. "You
have to learn to accept your losses. The Wacite Arends were doomed anyway.