"Mercedes Lackey - Owl Mage 1 - Owlflight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

The air was warm, the summer day flawless, and Darian Firkin was stalling, trying to delay the
inevitable, and he knew it. He had hopes that if he just lingered enough on this task of wood gathering, his
Master might forget about him - or something more urgent than the next lesson might come up before
Wizard Justyn got himself organized. It was worth a try anyway, since the very last thing Darian wanted
on this fine sunny day was to be cooped up in that musty old cottage. It was worth any amount of
physical work to be saved from that fate.
He took a deep breath of the balmy air, laden with the scent of curing hay, damp earth, and
growing things, and added another cut quarter-log to his burden of three, the bark and rough wood
catching on his shirt and leaving bits of dirt and moss smeared on the sleeve. Would four be enough to
qualify as a load? Probably. He headed for the cottage.
JustynтАЩs cottage decayed on the edge of the village, on the side farthest from the bridge and the
road, closest to the Forest. The village itself was a tight little square of cottages with three finer houses, all
arranged in neat rows around the village square; the fields farmed by the inhabitants of ErroldтАЩs Grove
stretched out on either side along the riverbank, but on the back side there was nothing but a single field
of corn and a small meadow where goats and sheep were kept in the winter. Behind all of that was the
forest. If he paused for a moment and listened, it wasnтАЩt at all difficult to hear the voice of the woods
from where Darian stood - all the little rustling and murmurings, the birdsong and animal calls. Sometimes
that was a torment, on days when Justyn set him some fool task that kept him pent in the cottage from
dawn to dusk.
He put down his burden on the pile at the side of the dilapidated cottage and returned for more.
He carefully selected three small pieces of chopped wood from the large communal pile; the
woodpile lay at the back of the right-hand side of the village of ErroldтАЩs Grove. He tucked them under his
arm and carried them toward the rick-holder at the side of Wizard JustynтАЩs tiny cottage. Every day that it
was possible, the village woodcutter went out with a team of oxen to find and bring back deadfall from
the Pelagiris Forest. He never went far, but then, he never had to; the trees in the Pelagiris were
enormous, with trunks so big that six men could stretch their arms around one and not have their fingers
touch, and one fallen tree would supply enough wood for the whole village for a month. Every time there
was a storm, at least one tree or several huge branches would come crashing down. The woodcutter did
nothing at all but cut wood; no farmwork, no herding. The villagers supplied him in turn with anything he
needed, and since he had no wife nor apprentice, the women took it in turn to cook for him, clean his
little hut, and sew, wash, and mend his clothing. The woodcutter was not a bright man, nor one given at
all to much thought, so he found the arrangement entirely to his satisfaction - and since the villagers never
went into the Forest anymore if they didnтАЩt have to, it was entirely to theirs as well.
Darian wished they had apprenticed him to the woodcutter instead of the wizard, but he hadnтАЩt
had any say in the matter. After all, as an orphan who had been left to the village to care for, he should be
grateful that they gave him any sort of care at all. At least that was what they all told him, loudly and
often.
The cottage was hardly longer than the wood-rick, built strongly at one time, of weathered, gray
river rock with a thatched roof of broomstraw in which birds twittered all spring and summer long. That
twittering was the first thing Darian heard every morning when he woke up. It was an adequate enough -
little cottage by the standards of the village, but it seemed badly cramped to Darian, and always smelled
slightly musty, with an undertone of bitter herbs and dust. No one ever cleaned it but Darian, so perhaps
that was the reason for the aroma. He didnтАЩt really despise the place, since after all, it was shelter, but it
didnтАЩt really feel like the home the other villagers and his Master tried to convince him it was.
When he reached the cottage and the upright supports that would hold exactly one measured rick
of wood between them, he set each piece down on the half-rick already piled there with exacting care,
distributing them with all the concentration of a fine lady making a flower arrangement. Only when they
were balanced precisely to his liking did he return for another three logs. He listened carefully for any
sound of life inside the cottage, for after Justyn had told him to replenish their fuel, Darian had left his
Master muttering over a book, and Darian had hopes that Justyn might get so involved that he wouldnтАЩt