"Robin Hobb - Assassin 1 - Assassin' s Apprentice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

complete, and I wonder if it is truly mine. Am I recalling it from my own mind,
or from dozens of retellings by legions of kitchen maids and ranks of scullions
and herds of stable boys as they explained my presence to each other? Perhaps I
have heard the story so many times, from so many sources, that I now recall it
as an actual memory of my own. Is the detail the result of a six-year-old's open


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absorption of all that goes on around him? Or could the completeness of the
memory be the bright overlay of the Skill, and the later drugs a man takes to
control his addiction to it, the drugs that bring on pains and cravings of their
own? The last is most possible. Perhaps it is even probable. One hopes it is not
the case.
The remembrance is almost physical: the chill grayness of the fading day, the
remorseless rain that soaked me, the icy cobbles of the strange town's streets,
even the callused roughness of the huge hand that gripped my small one.
Sometimes I wonder about that grip. The hand was hard and rough, trapping mine
within it. And yet it was warm, and not unkind as it held mine. Only firm. It
did not let me slip on the icy streets, but it did not let me escape my fate,
either. It was as implacable as the icy gray rain that glazed the trampled snow
and ice of the graveled pathway outside the huge wooden doors of the fortified
building that stood like a fortress within the town itself.
The doors were tall, not just to a six-year-old boy, but tall enough to admit
giants, to dwarf even the rangy old man who towered over me. And they looked
strange to me, although I cannot summon up what type of door or dwelling would
have looked familiar. Only that these, carved and bound with black iron hinges,
decorated with a buck's head and knocker of gleaming brass, were outside of my
experience. I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and
legs were wet and cold. And yet, again, I cannot recall that I had walked far
through winter's last curses, nor that I had been carried. No, it all starts
there, right outside the doors of the stronghouse, with my small hand trapped
inside the tall man's.
Almost, it is like a puppet show beginning. Yes, I can see it thus. The
curtains parted, and there we stood before that great door. The old man lifted
the brass knocker and banged it down, once, twice, thrice on the plate that
resounded to his pounding. And then, from offstage, a voice sounded. Not from
within the doors, but from behind us, back the way we had come. "Father,
please," the woman's voice begged. I turned to look at her, but it had begun to
snow again, a lacy veil that clung to eyelashes and coat sleeves. I can't recall
that I saw anyone. Certainly, I did not struggle to break free of the old man's
grip on my hand, nor did I call out, "Mother, Mother." Instead I stood, a
spectator, and heard the sound of boots within the keep, and the unfastening of
the door hasp within.
One last time she called. I can still hear the words perfectly, the
desperation in a voice that now would sound young to my ears. "Father, please, I
beg you!" A tremor shook the hand that gripped mine, but whether of anger or
some other emotion, I shall never know. As swift as a black crow seizes a bit of
dropped bread, the old man stooped and snatched up a frozen chunk of dirty ice.