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

again around him, and now not only Enlad sank to insignificance, but he himself,
so that in the eyes of the Archmage he was only a small figure, very small, in a
vast scene of sea-girt lands over which hung darkness.
He sat picking at the vivid moss that grew in the cracks of the
marble flagstones, and presently he said, hearing his voice, which had deepened
only in the last couple of years, sound thin and husky: "And I shall do as you
bid me."
"Your duty is to your father, not to me," the Archmage said.
His eyes were still on Arren, and now the boy looked up. As he had
made his act of submission he had forgotten himself, and now he saw the
Archmage: the greatest wizard of all Earthsea, the man who had capped the Black
Well of Fundaur and won the Ring of Erreth-Akbe from the Tombs of Atuan and
built the deep-founded sea wall of Nepp; the sailor who knew the seas from
Astowell to Selidor; the only living Dragonlord. There he knelt beside a
fountain, a short man and not young, a quiet-voiced man, with eyes as deep as
evening.
Arren scrambled up from sitting and knelt down formally on both
knees, all in haste. "My lord," he said stammering, "let me serve you!"
His self-assurance was gone, his face was flushed, his voice shook.
At his hip he wore a sword in a sheath of new leather figured with
inlay of red and gold; but the sword itself was plain, with a worn cross-hilt of
silvered bronze. This he drew forth, all in haste, and offered the hilt to the
Archmage, as a liegeman to his prince.
The Archmage did not put out his hand to touch the sword hilt. He
looked at it and at Arren. "That is yours, not mine," he said. "And you are no
man's servant."
"But my father said that I might stay on Roke until I learned what
this evil is and maybe some mastery -I have no skill, I don't think I have any
power, but there were mages among my forefathers- if I might in some way learn
to be of use to you-"
"Before your ancestors were mages," the Archmage said, "they were
kings."
He stood up and came with silent, vigorous step to Arren, and taking
the boy's hand made him rise. "I thank you for your offer of service, and though
I do not accept it now, yet I may, when we have taken counsel on these matters.
The offer of a generous spirit is not one to refuse lightly. Nor is the sword of
the son of Morred to be lightly turned aside!... Now go. The lad who brought you
here will see that you eat and bathe and rest. Go on," and he pushed Arren
lightly between the shoulder blades, a familiarity no one had ever taken before,
and which the young prince would have resented from anyone else; but he felt the
Archmage's touch as a thrill of glory. For Arren had fallen in love.
He had been an active boy, delighting in games, taking pride and
pleasure in the skills of body and mind, apt at his duties of ceremony and
governing, which were neither light nor simple. Yet he had never given himself
entirely to anything. All had come easily to him, and he had done all easily; it
had all been a game, and he had played at loving. But now the depths of him were
wakened, not by a game or dream, but by honor, danger, wisdom, by a scarred face
and a quiet voice and a dark hand holding, careless of its power, the staff of
yew that bore near the grip, in silver set in the black wood, the Lost Rune of
the Kings.