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

spring, and the golden roofs of Berila... How are you called?"
"I am called Arren."
"That would be a word in the dialect of your land. What is it in our
common speech?"
The boy said, "Sword."
The Archmage nodded. There was silence again, and then the boy said,
not boldly, but without timidity, "I had thought the Archmage knew all
languages"
The man shook his head, watching the fountain.
"And all names..."
"All names? Only Segoy who spoke the First Word, raising up the isles
from the deep sea, knew all names. To be sure," and the bright, fierce gaze was
on Arren's face, "if I needed to know your true name, I would know it. But
there's no need. Arren I will call you; and I am Sparrowhawk. Tell me, how was
your voyage here?"
"Too long."
"The winds blew ill?"
"The winds blew fair, but the news I bear is ill, Lord Sparrowhawk."
"Tell it, then," the Archmage said gravely, but like one yielding to
a child's impatience; and while Arren spoke, he looked again at the crystal
curtain of water drops falling from the upper basin into the lower, not as if he
did not listen, but as if he listened to more than the boy's words.
"You know, my lord, that the prince my father is a wizardly man,
being of the lineage of Morred, and having spent a year here on Roke in his
youth. Some power he has and knowledge, though he seldom uses his arts, being
concerned with the ruling and ordering of his realm, the governance of cities
and matters of trade. The fleets of our island go out westward, even into the
West Reach, trading for sapphires and Ox hides and tin, and early this winter a
sea captain returned to our city Berila with a tale that came to my father's
ears, so that he had the man sent for and heard him tell it" The boy spoke
quickly, with assurance. He had been trained by civil, courtly people, and did
not have the self-consciousness of the young.
"The sea captain said that on the isle of Narveduen, which is some
five hundred miles west of us by the ship lanes, there was no more magic. Spells
had no power there, he said, and the words of wizardry were forgotten. My father
asked him if it was that all the sorcerers and witches had left that isle, and
he answered, No: there were some there who had been sorcerers, but they cast no
more spells, not even so much as a charm for kettle-mending or the finding of a
lost needle. And my father asked, Were not the folk of Narveduen dismayed? And
the sea captain said again, No, they seemed uncaring. And indeed, he said, there
was sickness among them, and their autumn harvest had been poor, and still they
seemed careless. He said -I was there, when he spoke to the prince- he said,
`They were like sick men, like a man who has been told he must die within the
year, and tells himself it is not true, and he will live forever. They go
about,' he said, `without looking at the world.' When other traders returned,
they repeated the tale that Narveduen had become a poor land and had lost the
arts of wizardry. But all this was mere tales of the Reach, which are always
strange, and only my father gave it much thought.
"Then in the New Year, in the Festival of the Lambs that we hold in
Enlad, when the shepherds' wives come into the city bringing the firstlings of