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

carpenter's wife, mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was
called Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons: Orm
Embar and Kalessin.
"We should meet tonight," the Archmage said. "I'll go to the Patterner. And I'll send to
Kurremkarmerruk, so that he'll put his lists away and let his students rest one evening and come
to us, if not in flesh. Will you see to the others?"
"Aye," said the Doorkeeper, smiling, and was gone; and the Archmage also was gone; and the
fountain talked to itself all serene and never ceasing in the sunlight of early spring.

Somewhere to the west of the Great House of Roke, and often somewhat south of it, the
Immanent Grove is usually to be seen. There is no place for it on maps, and there is no way to it
except for those who know the way to it. But even novices and townsfolk and farmers can see it,
always at a certain distance, a wood of high trees whose leaves have a hint of gold in their
greenness even in the spring. And they consider -the novices, the townsfolk, the farmers- that the
Grove moves about in a mystifying manner. But in this they are mistaken, for the Grove does not
move. Its roots are the roots of being. It is all the rest that moves.
Ged walked over the fields from the Great House. He took off his white cloak, for the sun
was at noon. A farmer ploughing a brown hillside raised his hand in salute, and Ged replied the
same way. Small birds went up into the air and sang. The sparkweed was just coming into flower in
the fallows and beside the roads. Far up, a hawk cut a wide arc on the sky. Ged glanced up, and
raised his hand again. Down shot the bird in a rush of windy feathers, and stooped straight to the
offered wrist, gripping with yellow claws. It was no sparrowhawk but a big Ender-falcon of Roke, a
white-and-brown-barred fishing hawk. It looked sidelong at the Archmage with one round, bright-
gold eye, then clashed its hooked beak and stared at him straight on with both round, bright 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