"Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth 1 - Wizard's First Rule" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodkind Terry)

Richard had long since passed the age when he did as his brother said. Wanting
to spare him, the people there didn't let him see the body. But still, he saw
the big, sickening splashes and puddles of blood, brown and dry across the
plank floor. When Richard came close, voices fell silent, except to offer
sympathy, which only deepened the riving pain. Yet he had heard them talking,
in hushed tones, of the stories and the wild rumors of things come out of the
boundary.
Of magic.

Richard was shocked at the way his father's small home had been torn apart, as
if a storm had been turned loose inside. Only a few things were left
untouched. The blue message jar still sat on the shelf, and inside he found
the sprig of vine. It was still in his pocket now. What his father meant him
to know from it, he couldn't guess.

Grief and depression overwhelmed him, and even though he still had his
brother, he felt abandoned. That he was grown into manhood offered him no
sanctuary from the forlorn feeling of being orphaned and alone in the world, a
feeling he had known before, when his mother died while he was still young.
Even though his father had often been away, sometimes for weeks, Richard had
always known he was somewhere, and would be back. Now he would never be back.

Michael wouldn't let him have anything to do with the search for the killer.
He said he had the best trackers in the army looking and he wanted Richard to
stay out of it, for his own good. So Richard simply didn't show the vine to
Michael, and went off alone every day, searching for it. For three weeks he
walked the trails of the Hartland Woods, every trail, even the ones few others
knew of, but he never saw it.

Finally, against his better judgment, he gave in to the whispers in his mind,
and went to the upper Ven Forest, close to the boundary. The whispers haunted
him with the feeling that he somehow knew something of why his father had been
murdered. They teased him, tantalized him with thoughts just out of reach, and
laughed at him for not seeing it. Richard lectured himself that it was his
grief playing tricks, not something real.

He had thought that when he found the vine it would give him some sort of
answer. Now that he had, he didn't know what to think. The whispers had
stopped teasing him, but now they brooded. He knew it was just his own mind
thinking, and he told himself to stop trying to give the whispers a life of
their own. Zedd had taught him better than that.

Richard looked up at the big fir tree in its agony of death. He thought again
of his father's death. The vine had been there. Now the vine was killing this
tree; it couldn't be anything good. Though he couldn't do anything for his
father, he didn't have to let the vine preside over another death. Gripping it
firmly, he pulled, and with powerful muscles ripped the sinewy tendrils away
from the tree.

That's when the vine bit him.