"Stephen Lawhead - Pendragon Cycle 02 - Merlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

My way. Was it? Was it evermy way? There's a thought. Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself. I always
am. This is to be Arthur's story. Yes, but there is more to Arthur than his birth. To understand him, you
have to understand the land. This land, thisIsland of the Mighty.

And you have to understand me, for I am the man who made him.

BOOK ONE

KING



ONE



Many years have come and gone since I awakened in this worlds-realm. Too many years of darkness
and death, disease, war, and evil. Yes, very much evil.

But life was bright once, bright as sunrise on the sea and moonglow on water, bright as the fire on the
hearth, bright as the red-gold tore around my grandfather Elphin's throat. Bright, I tell you, and full of
every good thing.

I know that every man recalls something of the same golden sheen in life's beginning, but my memories
are not less real or true for that.

Merlin. . . a curious name. Perhaps. No doubt my father would have chosen a different name for his son.
But my mother can be forgiven for her lapse. Merlin тАФ Myrddin among my father's people тАФ suits me.
Yet, every man has two names: the one he is given, and the one he wins for himself.

Emrys is the name I have won among men and it is my own.

Emrys, Immortal. . . Emrys, Divine. . . Emrys Wledig, king and prophet to his people. Ambrosius it is to
the Latin speakers, and Embries to the people of southernBritain and Lloegres.

But Myrddin Emrys am I to the Cymry of the hill-bound fastness of the west. And because they were
my father's people, I feel they are my own as well. Although my mother long ago taught me the folly of
this belief, it comforts me тАФ much, I suppose, as it must have comforted my father in his times of doubt"

And as there is much evil in the world, there is much doubt also. This is not the least of the Adversary's
servants. And there are so many others. . .

Well, and well, get on with it, Mumbler. What treasures from your plundered store will you lay before
us?

I take up my staff and stir the embers and I see again the images of my earliest memory: Ynys Avallach,
the Isle of Avallach. It is the home of my grandfather, King Avallach, the Fisher King, and the first home I
ever knew. It was here in these polished halls of his palace that I took my first faltering steps.