"Ursula K. LeGuin - 3. The Farthest Shore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

THE FARTHEST SHORE
URSULA K. LEGUIN
1972




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The Rowan Tree
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In the Court of the Fountain the sun of March shone through young
leaves of ash and elm, and water leapt and fell through shadow and clear light.
About that roofless court stood four high walls of stone. Behind those were
rooms and courts, passages, corridors, towers, and at last the heavy outmost
walls of the Great House of Roke, which would stand any assault of war or
earthquake or the sea itself, being built not only of stone, but of
incontestable magic. For Roke is the Isle of the Wise, where the art magic is
taught; and the Great House is the school and central place of wizardry; and the
central place of the House is that small court far within the walls, where the
fountain plays and the trees stand in rain or sun or starlight.
The tree nearest the fountain, a well-grown rowan, had humped and
cracked the marble pavement with its roots. Veins of bright green moss filled
the cracks, spreading up from the grassy plot around the basin. A boy sat there
on the low hump of marble and moss, his gaze following the fall of the
fountain's central jet. He was nearly a man, but still a boy; slender, dressed
richly. His face might have been cast in golden bronze, it was so finely molded
and so still.
Behind him, fifteen feet away perhaps, under the trees at the other
end of the small central lawn, a man stood, or seemed to stand. It was hard to
be certain in that flickering shift of shadow and warm light. Surely he was
there, a man in white, standing motionless. As the boy watched the fountain, the
man watched the boy. There was no sound or movement but the play of leaves and
the play of the water and its continual song.
The man walked forward. A wind stirred the rowan tree and moved its
newly opened leaves. The boy leapt to his feet, lithe and startled. He faced the
man and bowed to him. "My Lord Archmage," he said.
The man stopped before him, a short, straight, vigorous figure in a
hooded cloak of white wool. Above the folds of the laid-down hood his face was
reddish-dark, hawk-nosed, seamed on one cheek with old scars. The eyes were
bright and fierce. Yet he spoke gently. "It's a pleasant pace to sit, the Court
of the Fountain," he said, and, forestalling the boy's apology, "You have
traveled far and have not rested. Sit down again."
He knelt on the white rim of the basin and held out his hand to the
ring of glittering drops that fell from the higher bowl of the fountain, letting
the water run through his fingers. The boy sat down again on the humped tiles,
and for a minute neither spoke.
"You are the son of the Prince of Enlad and the Enlades," the
Archmage said, "heir of the Principality of Morred. There is no older heritage
in all Earthsea, and none fairer. I have seen the orchards of Enlad in the