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

merchant's son came westward by himself, drawn by love of adventure or craving to learn wizardry.
Such had been the Master Patterner ten years ago, a sword-begirt, red-plumed young savage from
Karego-At, arriving at Gont on a rainy morning and telling the Doorkeeper in imperious and scanty
Hardic, "I come to learn!" And now he stood in the greengold light under the trees, a tall man and
fair, with long fair hair and strange green eyes, the Master Patterner of Earthsea.
It may be that he too knew Ged's name, but if so he never spoke it. They greeted each
other in silence.
"What are you watching there?" the Archmage asked, and the other answered, "A spider."
Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a web, a circle delicately
suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In the center the spinner waited, a grey-black
thing no larger than the pupil of an eye.
"She too is a patterner," Ged said, studying the artful web.


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"What is evil?" asked the younger man.
The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both.
"A web we men weave," Ged answered.
In this wood no birds sang. It was silent in the noon light and hot. About them stood the
trees and shadows.
"There is word from Narveduen and Enlad: the same."
"South and southwest. North and northwest," said the Patterner, never looking from the
round web.
"We shall come here this evening. This is the best place for counsel."
"I have no counsel." The Patterner looked now at Ged, and his greenish eyes were cold. "I
am afraid," he said. "There is fear. There is fear at the roots."
"Aye," said Ged. "We must look to the deep springs, I think. We have enjoyed the sunlight
too long, basking in that peace which the healing of the Ring brought, accomplishing small things,
fishing the shallows. Tonight we must question the depths: And so he left the Patterner alone,
gazing still at the spider in the sunny grass.
At the edge of the Grove, where the leaves of the great trees reached out over ordinary
ground, he sat with his back against a mighty root, his staff across his knees. He shut his eyes
as if resting, and sent a sending of his spirit over the hills and fields of Roke, northward, to
the sea-assaulted cape where the Isolate Tower stands.
"Kurremkarmerruk," he said in spirit, and the Master Namer looked up from the thick book
of names of roots and herbs and leaves and seeds and petals that he was reading to his pupils and
said, "I am here, my lord."
Then he listened, a big, thin old man, white-haired under his dark hood; and the students
at their writing-tables in the tower room looked up at him and glanced at one another.
"I will come," Kurremkarmerruk said, and bent his head to his book again, saying, "Now the
petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is iebera, and so also the sepal, which is
partonath; and stem and leaf and root hath each his name..."
But under his tree the Archmage Ged, who knew all the names of moly, withdrew his sending
and, stretching out his legs more comfortably and keeping his eyes shut, presently fell asleep in
the leafspotted sunlight.