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

comprehend or experience except in frenzied snatches тАФ not that it isever comprehended or
experienced in any other way тАФ an unimaginable wealth of wonders displayed for instant plunder. Tiny
vessel though I was, I dipped full and deep in the dizzy flood of sensation to collapse at the end of each
day drunk with life and exhausted in each small limb.

If Ynys Avallach was all my world, I was given the freedom of it. There was no nook too small, no
corner too forgotten, but that I knew it and made it my own. Stables, kitchens, audience hall, bed
chambers, gallery, portico, or gardens, I wandered where I would. And if I had been king I could not
have commanded more authority, for every childish whim was honoured with unthinking deference by
those around me.

Thus, I came to know early the substance and use of power. Great Light, you know I have never sought
it for myself! Power was offered me and I took it. Where is the wrong in that?

In those days, however, power was seen differently. Right and wrong were what men conceived in their
own minds and hearts. Sometimes in truth, more often in error. There were no judges in the land, no
standard men could point to and say, 'You see, this is right!' Justice was that which issued from the steel
in a king's hand.

You would do well to remember this.

But these ideas of justice and right came later, much later. There was living to be done first, a foundation
to be erected on which to build the man.

TheIsland of the Mighty, in those days, lay in a welter of confusion which is common enough now, but
was seldom seen then. Kings and princes vied for position and power. Did I say kings? There were more
kings than sheep, more princes than crows on a battlefield, more ambitious little men than salmon in
season; and each prince and princeling, chief and king, each jumped-up official with a Roman title
seeking to snatch what he could from the slavering jaws of onrushing Night, to squirrel it away, thinking
that when the darkness finally came he could sit in his den and gloat and preen and gorge himself on his
good fortune.

How many of those choked on it instead?

As I say, they were tunes of confusion, and the spirit may become as confused as the mind and heart.
The central fact of my early life was the deep love and peace that enfolded me. I knew, even then, that
this was extraordinary, but children accept the extraordinary with the same facile assent as the dreary
commonplace.

Was I conscious of the things that set me apart from other men? Did I know I was different? An incident
from those far-gone days stands out in my mind. Once, when at my daily lessons with Blaise, my tutor
and friend, a question occurred to me.
 'Blaise,' I asked, 'why is Hafgan so old?' We were sitting in the apple grove below the Tor watching the
clouds race westward. I could not have been more than five summers old myself, I think.

'You think him old?'

'He must be very old to know so much.'

'Oh, yes, Hafgan has lived long and seen much. He is very wise.'