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

gold eyes. "Fearless," the Archmage said to it in the tongue of the Making.
The big hawk beat its wings and gripped with its talons, gazing at
him.
"Go then, brother, fearless one."
The farmer, away off on the hillside under the bright sky, had
stopped to watch. Once last autumn he had watched the Archmage take a wild bird
on his wrist, and then in the next moment had seen no man, but two hawks
mounting on the wind.
This time they parted as the farmer watched: the bird to the high
air, the man walking on across the muddy fields.
He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led
always straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it,
and following it came soon into the shadow of the trees.
The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could believe
at last that the Grove never moved: they were like immemorial towers grey with
years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet these, the most
ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches that had died. They were
not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with bright
crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.
The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of
all the years. Ferns and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind
of tree but the one, which had no name in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea. Under
the branches the air smelled earthy and fresh, and had a taste in the mouth like
live spring-water.
In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an
enormous tree, Ged met the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and
seldom or never came forth from it. His hair was butter-yellow; he was no
Archipelagan. Since the restoral of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, the barbarians of
Kargad had ceased their forays and had struck some bargains of trade and peace
with the Inner Lands. They were not friendly folk, and held aloof. But now and
then a young warrior or merchant's son came westward by himself, drawn by love
of adventure or craving to learn wizardry. Such had been the Master Patterner
ten years ago, a sword-begirt, red-plumed young savage from Karego-At, arriving
at Gont on a rainy morning and telling the Doorkeeper in imperious and scanty
Hardic, "I come to learn!" And now he stood in the greengold light under the
trees, a tall man and fair, with long fair hair and strange green eyes, the
Master Patterner of Earthsea.
It may be that he too knew Ged's name, but if so he never spoke it.
They greeted each other in silence.
"What are you watching there?" the Archmage asked, and the other
answered, "A spider."
Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a
web, a circle delicately suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In
the center the spinner waited, a grey-black thing no larger than the pupil of an
eye.
"She too is a patterner," Ged said, studying the artful web.
"What is evil?" asked the younger man.
The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both.
"A web we men weave," Ged answered.
In this wood no birds sang. It was silent in the noon light and hot.