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

brightening east. "But I think I can borrow what I need from you. So we come from Temere in our
boat Dolphin, and I am neither lord nor mage nor Sparrowhawk, but- how am I called?"
"Hawk, my lord."
Then Arren bit his tongue.
"Practice, nephew," said the Archmage. "It takes practice. You've never been anything but
a prince. While I have been many things, and last of all, and maybe least, an Archmage... We go
south looking for emmelstone, that blue stuff they carve charms of. I know they value it in Enlad.
They make it into charms against rheums, sprains, stiff necks, and slips of the tongue."
After a moment Arren laughed, and as he lifted his head, the boat lifted on a long wave,
and he saw the rim of the sun against the edge of the ocean, a flare of sudden gold, before them.
Sparrowhawk stood with one hand on the mast, for the little boat leapt on the choppy
waves, and facing the sunrise of the equinox of spring he chanted. Arren did not know the Old
Speech, the tongue of wizards and dragons, but he heard praise and rejoicing in the words, and
there was a great striding rhythm in them like the rise and fall of tides or the balance of the
day and night each succeeding each forever. Gulls cried on the wind, and the shores of Thwil Bay
slid past to right and left, and they entered on the long waves, full of light, of the Inmost Sea.
From Roke to Hort Town is no great voyage, but they spent three nights at sea. The
Archmage had been urgent to be gone, but once gone, he was more than patient. The winds turned
contrary as soon as they were away from the charmed weather of Roke, but he did not call a
magewind into their sail, as any weatherworker could have done; instead, he spent hours teaching
Arren how to manage the boat in a stiff headwind, in the rock-fanged sea east of Issel. The second
night out it rained, the rough, cold rain of March, but he said no spell to keep it off them. On
the next night, as they lay outside the entrance to Hort Harbor in a calm, cold, foggy darkness,
Arren thought about this, and reflected that in the short time he had known him, the Archmage had
done no magic at all.
He was a peerless sailor, though. Arren had learned more in three days' sailing with him
than in ten years of boating and racing on Berila Bay. And mage and sailor are not so far apart;
both work with the powers of sky and sea, and bend great winds to the uses of their hands,
bringing near what was remote. Archmage or Hawk the sea-trader, it came to much the same thing.
He was a rather silent man, though perfectly goodhumored. No clumsiness of Arren's fretted
him; he was companionable; there could be no better shipmate, Arren thought. But he would go into
his own thoughts and be silent for hours on end, and then when he spoke there was a harshness in
his voice, and he would look right through Arren. This did not weaken the love the boy felt for
him, but maybe it lessened liking somewhat; it was a little awesome. Perhaps Sparrowhawk felt
this, for in that foggy night off the shores of Wathort he began to talk to Arren, rather
haltingly, about himself. "I do not want to go among men again tomorrow," he said. "I've been
pretending that I am free... That nothing's wrong in the world. That I'm not Archmage, not even
sorcerer. That I'm Hawk of Temere, without responsibilities or privileges, owing nothing to
anyone..." He stopped and after a while went on, "Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great
choices must be made. When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of
doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you
to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you
come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or
wonder who, after all, you are."
How could such a man, thought Arren, be in doubt as to who and what he was? He had
believed such doubts were reserved for the young, who had not done anything yet.
The boat rocked in the great, cool darkness.
"That's why I like the sea," said Sparrowhawk's voice in that darkness.
Arren understood him; but his own thoughts ran ahead, as they had been doing all these
three days and nights, to their quest, the aim of their sailing. And since his companion was in a