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

aye, nuncle Hawk!"
But, while the mage dickered with a harbor guardsman over the fee for docking and guarding
the boat, Arren kept looking at him to make sure that he did know him. And as he looked, the
transformation troubled him more, not less. It was too complete; this was not the Archmage at all,
this was no wise guide and leader... The guardsman's fee was high, and Sparrowhawk grumbled as he
paid, and strode away with Arren, still grumbling. "A test of my patience," he said. "Pay that
swag-bellied thief to guard my boat! When half a spell would do twice the job! Well, this is the
price of disguise... And I've forgot my proper speech, have I not, nevvy?"
They were walking up a crowded, smelly, gaudy street lined with shops, little more than
booths, whose owners stood in the doorways among heaps and festoons of wares, loudly proclaiming
the beauty and cheapness of their pots, hosiery, hats, spades, pins, purses, kettles, baskets,
firehooks, knives, ropes, bolts, bed-linens, and every other kind of hardware and drygoods.
"Is it a fair?"
"Eh?" said the snub-nosed man, bending his grizzled head.
"Is it a fair, nuncle?"
"Fair? No, no. They keep it up all year round, here. Keep your fishcakes, mistress, I have
breakfasted!" And Arren tried to shake off a man with a tray of little brass vases, who followed
at his heels whining, "Buy, try, handsome young master, they won't fail you, breath as sweet as
the roses of Numima, charming the women to you, try them, young sealord, young prince..."
All at once Sparrowhawk was between Arren and the peddler, saying, "What charms are
these?"
"Not charms!" the man whined, shrinking away from him. "I sell no charms, sea-master! Only
syrups to sweeten the breath after drink or hazia-root - only syrups, great prince!" He cowered
right down onto the pavement stones, his tray of vases clinking and clattering, some of them
tipping so that a drop of the sticky stuff inside oozed out, pink or purple, over the lip.
Sparrowhawk turned away without speaking and went on with Arren. Soon the crowds thinned
and the shops grew wretchedly poor, little kennels displaying as all their wares a handful of bent
nails, a broken pestle, and an old cardingcomb. This poverty disgusted Arren less than the rest;
in the rich end of the street he had felt choked, suffocated, by the pressure of things to be sold
and voices screaming to him to buy, buy. And the peddler's abjectness had shocked him. He thought
of the cool, bright streets of his Northern town. No man in Berila, he thought, would have
grovelled to a stranger like that. "These are a foul folk!" he said.
"This way, nevvy," was all his companion's answer. They turned aside into a passage
between high, red, windowless house walls, which ran along the hillside and through an archway
garlanded with decaying banners, out again into the sunlight in a steep square, another
marketplace, crowded with booths and stalls and swarming with people and flies.
Around the edges of the square, a number of men and women were sitting or lying on their
backs, motionless. Their mouths had a curious blackish look, as if they had been bruised, and
around their lips flies swarmed and gathered in clusters like bunches of dried currants.


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"So many," said Sparrowhawk's voice, low and hasty as if he too had gotten a shock; but
when Arren looked at him there was the blunt, bland face of the hearty trader Hawk, showing no
concern.
"What's wrong with those people?"
"Hazia. It soothes and numbs, letting the body be free of the mind. And the mind roams
free. But when it returns to the body it needs more hazia... And the craving grows and the life is