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

them," he said. There was a pause.
"My father believes that this matter, and the tale of Narveduen, show some evil at work in
our part of the world. He desires the counsel of the Wise."
"That he sent you proves that his desire is urgent," said the Archmage. "You are his only
son, and the voyage from Enlad to Roke is not short. Is there more to tell?"
"Only some old wives' tales from the hills."
"What do the old wives say?"
"That all the fortunes witches read in smoke and water pools tell of ill, and that their
love-potions go amiss. But these are people without true wizardry."
"Fortune-telling and love-potions are not of much account, but old women are worth
listening to. Well, your message will indeed be discussed by the Masters of Roke. But I do not
know, Arren, what counsel they may give your father. For Enlad is not the first land from which
such tidings have come."
Arren's trip from the north, down past the great isle Havnor and through the Inmost Sea to
Roke, was his first voyage. Only in these last few weeks had he seen lands that were not his own
homeland, become aware of distance and diversity, and recognized that there was a great world
beyond the pleasant hills of Enlad, and many people in it. He was not yet used to thinking widely,
and so it was a while before he understood. "Where else?" he asked then, a little dismayed. For he
had hoped to bring a prompt cure home to Enlad.
"In the South Reach, first. Latterly even in the south of the Archipelago, in Wathort.
There is no more magic done in Wathort, men say. It is hard to be sure. That land has long been
rebellious and piratical, and to hear a Southern trader is to hear a liar, as they say. Yet the
story is always the same: The springs of wizardry have run dry."
"But here on Roke-"
"Here on Roke we have felt nothing of this. We are defended here from storm and change and
all ill chance. Too well defended, perhaps. Prince, what will you do now?"
"I shall go back to Enlad when I can bring my father some clear word of the nature of this
evil and of its remedy."
Once more the Archmage looked at him, and this time, for all his training, Arren looked
away. He did not know why, for there was nothing unkind in the gaze of those dark eyes. They were


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impartial, calm, compassionate.
All in Enlad looked up to his father, and he was his father's son. No man had ever looked
at him thus, not as Arren, Prince of Enlad, son of the Ruling Prince, but as Arren alone. He did
not like to think that he feared the Archmage's gaze, but he could not meet it. It seemed to
enlarge the world yet 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