"Robin Hobb - Tawny Man 2 - Golden Fool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

Robin Hobb
Tawny Man 02
Golden Fool

PROLOGUE
Losses Sustained

The loss of a bond beast is a difficult event to explain to the non-Witted. Those
who can speak of the death of an animal as тАШit was only a dogтАЩ will never grasp it.
Others, more sympathetic, perceive it as the death of a beloved pet. Even those
who say, тАШIt must be like losing a child, or a wifeтАЩ are still seeing only one facet of
the toll. To lose the living creature that one has been linked with is more than the
loss of a companion or loved one. It was the sudden amputation of half my
physical body. My vision was dimmed, my appetite diminished by the insipid
flavour of food. My hearing was dulled andтАж
The manuscript, begun so many years ago, ends in a flurry of blots and angry
stabbings from my pen. I can recall the moment at which I realized I had slipped
from writing in generalities into my own intimate rendering of pain. There are
creases on the scroll where I flung it to the floor and stamped on it. The wonder
is that I only kicked it aside rather than committing it to the flames. I do not know
who took pity on the wretched thing and shelved it on my scroll rack. Perhaps it
was Thick, doing his tasks in his methodical, unthinking way. Certainly I find
nothing there that I would have saved.
So it has often been with rny writing efforts. My various attempts at a history of
the Six Duchies too often meandered into a history of myself. From a treatise on
herbs my pen would wander to the various treatments for Skill-ailments. My
studies of the White Prophets delve too deeply into their relationships with their
Catalysts. I do not know if it is conceit that always turns my thoughts to my own
life, or if my writing is my pathetic effort to explain my life to myself. The years
have come and gone in their scores of turnings, and night after night I still take
pen in hand and write. Still I strive to understand who I am. Srill I promise myself,
тАШNext time I will do betterтАЩ in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered
a тАШnext timeтАЩ.
Yet I did not do that when I lost Nighteyes. I never promised myself that I
would bond again, and do better by my next partner. Such a thought would have
been traitorous. The death of Nighteyes gutted me. I walked wounded through
my life in the days that followed, unaware of just how mutilated I was. I was like
the man who complains of the itching of his severed leg. The itching distracts
from the immense knowledge that one will ever after hobble through life. So the
immediate grief at his death concealed the full damage done to me. I was
confused, thinking that my pain and my loss were one and the same thing,
whereas one was but a symptom of the other.
In a curious way, it was a second coming-of-age. This one was not an arrival
at manhood, but rather a slow realization of myself as an individual.
Circumstances had plunged me back into the intrigues of the court at Buckkeep
Castle. I had the friendship of the Fool and Chade. I stood at the edge of a true
relationship with Jinna, the hedge-witch. My boy Hap had flung himself headlong
into both apprenticeship and romance, and seemed to be floundering desperately
through both. Young Prince Dutiful, poised on the lip of his betrothal to the
Outislander Narcheska, had turned to me as a mentor; not just as a teacher for