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

the flocks, my father named the wizard Root to say the spells of increase over
the lambs. But Root came back to our hall distressed and laid his staff down and
said, `My lord, I cannot say the spells.' My father questioned him, but he could
say only, `I have forgotten the words and the patterning.' So my father went to
the marketplace and said the spells himself, and the festival was completed. But
I saw him come home to the palace that evening, and he looked grim and weary,
and he said to me, `I said the words, but I do not know if they had meaning.'
And indeed there's trouble among the flocks this spring, the ewes dying in
birth, and many lambs born dead, and some are... deformed." The boy's easy,
eager voice dropped; he winced as he said the word and swallowed. "I saw some of
them," he said. There was a pause.
"My father believes that this matter, and the tale of Narveduen, show
some evil at work in our part of the world. He desires the counsel of the Wise."
"That he sent you proves that his desire is urgent," said the
Archmage. "You are his only son, and the voyage from Enlad to Roke is not short.
Is there more to tell?"
"Only some old wives' tales from the hills."
"What do the old wives say?"
"That all the fortunes witches read in smoke and water pools tell of
ill, and that their love-potions go amiss. But these are people without true
wizardry."
"Fortune-telling and love-potions are not of much account, but old
women are worth listening to. Well, your message will indeed be discussed by the
Masters of Roke. But I do not know, Arren, what counsel they may give your
father. For Enlad is not the first land from which such tidings have come."
Arren's trip from the north, down past the great isle Havnor and
through the Inmost Sea to Roke, was his first voyage. Only in these last few
weeks had he seen lands that were not his own homeland, become aware of distance
and diversity, and recognized that there was a great world beyond the pleasant
hills of Enlad, and many people in it. He was not yet used to thinking widely,
and so it was a while before he understood. "Where else?" he asked then, a
little dismayed. For he had hoped to bring a prompt cure home to Enlad.
"In the South Reach, first. Latterly even in the south of the
Archipelago, in Wathort. There is no more magic done in Wathort, men say. It is
hard to be sure. That land has long been rebellious and piratical, and to hear a
Southern trader is to hear a liar, as they say. Yet the story is always the
same: The springs of wizardry have run dry."
"But here on Roke-"
"Here on Roke we have felt nothing of this. We are defended here from
storm and change and all ill chance. Too well defended, perhaps. Prince, what
will you do now?"
"I shall go back to Enlad when I can bring my father some clear word
of the nature of this evil and of its remedy."
Once more the Archmage looked at him, and this time, for all his
training, Arren looked away. He did not know why, for there was nothing unkind
in the gaze of those dark eyes. They were impartial, calm, compassionate.
All in Enlad looked up to his father, and he was his father's son. No
man had ever looked at him thus, not as Arren, Prince of Enlad, son of the
Ruling Prince, but as Arren alone. He did not like to think that he feared the
Archmage's gaze, but he could not meet it. It seemed to enlarge the world yet