"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

cried
to myself. "You're risking everything! You've walked off the job, left all
your
money behind in London, you've ruined everything!" And then, as I looked up,
I
saw a sight that banished all reason from my mind.

Before me, scarcely twenty yards away, was the largest oak tree I had ever
seen,
the grandfather of all English oaks. Its spreading upper branches were as
thick
as my thigh, its aged, gnarled trunk so wide that several men with their
hands
linked together could not encompass it. There it stood, an ancient leviathan,
enough wood to keep my family warm for years to come. I stared at it, my gaze
traveling up its trunk to its lofty canopy of branches, and I went absolutely
mad.

I stood and gripped my axe in both hands, raising it high overhead, and I
screamed as I charged the tree like some battle-maddened, Hun barbarian
running
at a Roman phalanx. In that moment of absolute insanity, I had become one
with
the slain James Whitby. The tree became the focal point for all my fury and
frustration, my grief and helplessness, my anger at the whole damned world. I
could have chopped away at its gargantuan trunk until the crack of doom and
never have had a hope of felling it, but that thought never occurred to me.
It
couldn't have occurred to me. I wasn't thinking, I was just reacting, like a
wounded beast that had been brought to bay.

I struck the tree a blow with all the power I could muster. The force of that
blow ran up through the axe handle, through my hands, up my arms into my
shoulders, and in the next instant, I was flying. I landed on my back some
distance away, momentarily stunned and on the verge of losing consciousness.
I
felt a throbbing, tingling sensation all over my body, not unlike that which
I
had once experienced as a child when I had stuck my finger into an electric
socket.

At the precise moment that I struck the giant oak tree with my axe, a bolt of
lightning had come lancing down from the clouds and hit the tree. As least,
that
was my first impression, because it seemed there could have been no other
explanation. Certainly, it never would have occurred to me that the lightning
could have come not from the sky, but from within the tree itself.

As I recovered from my shock, I raised myself up slightly and stared at the
smoking remnants of the tree. My vision was still somewhat blurred, but I