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

astray? If the whole flock wander, will our black sheep stay by the fold?"
At that the Doorkeeper laughed, but he said nothing.
"Then to you all," said the Archmage, it seems that there is nothing very wrong; or if,
there is, it lies in this, that our lands are ungoverned or ill-governed, so that all the arts and
high skills of men suffer from neglect. With that much I agree. Indeed it is because the South is
all but lost to peaceful commerce that we must depend on rumor; and who has any safe word from the
West Reach, save this from Narveduen? If ships went forth and came back safely as of old, if our
lands of Earthsea were well-knit, we might know how things stand in the remote places, and so
could act. And I think we would act! For, my lords, when the Prince of Enlad tells us that he
spoke the words of the Making in a spell and yet did not know their meaning as he spoke them; when
the Master Patterner says that there is fear at the roots and will say no more: is this so little
a foundation for anxiety? When a storm begins, it is only a little cloud on the horizon."
"You have a sense for the black things, Sparrowhawk," said the Doorkeeper. "You ever did.
Say what you think is wrong."
"I do not know. There is a weakening of power. There is a want of resolution. There is a
dimming of the sun. I feel, my lords- I feel as if we who sit here talking, were all wounded
mortally, and while we talk and talk our blood runs softly from our veins..."
"And you would be up and doing."
"I would," said the Archmage.
"Well," said the Doorkeeper, "can the owls keep the hawk from flying?"
"But where would you go?" the Changer asked, and the Chanter answered him: "To seek our
king and bring him to his throne!"
The Archmage looked keenly at the Chanter, but answered only, "I would go where the
trouble is."
"South or west," said the Master Windkey.
"And north and east if need be," said the Doorkeeper.
"But you are needed here, my lord," said the Changer. "Rather than to go seeking blindly
among unfriendly peoples on strange seas, would it not be wiser to stay here, where all magic is
strong, and find out by your arts what this evil or disorder is?"
"My arts do not avail me," the Archmage said.
There was that in his voice which made them all look at him, sober and with uneasy eyes.
"I am the Warder of Roke. I do not leave Roke lightly. I wish that your counsel and my own were
the same; but that is not to be hoped for now. The judgment must be mine: and I must go."
"To that judgment we yield," said the Summoner.
"And I go alone. You are the Council of Roke, and the Council must not be broken. Yet one
I will take with me, if he will come." He looked at Arren. "You offered me your service,
yesterday. Last night the Master Patterner said, `Not by chance does any man come to the shores of
Roke. Not by chance is a son of Morred the bearer of this news' And no other word had he for us
all the night. Therefore I ask you, Arren, will you come with me?"
"Yes, my lord," said Arren, with a dry throat.
"The prince, your father, surely would not let you go into this peril," said the Changer
somewhat sharply, and to the Archmage, "The lad is young and not trained in wizardry."
"I have years and spells enough for both of us," Sparrowhawk said in a dry voice. "Arren,


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what of your father?"
"He would let me go."