"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 10 - The Magic of Recluce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

you are bored with us, and since you are not quite ready for the possibility of undertaking the
dangergeld, how would you like to spend a year or so learning about woodworking with your Uncle
Sardit?"
"Donara?" asked my father, obviously questioning my mother's volunteering of his sister's
husband.
"Sardit and I have talked it over, Gunnar. He's willing to take on the challenge."
"Challenge?" I blurted. "What challenge? I can learn anything . . ."
"For about the first three weeks," my father commented.
"It's not as though you will ever be a master woodworker, Lerris," added mother. "But the
general skills and discipline will come in useful when you undertake your dangergeld."
"Me? Why would I ever go tramping off through the wild lands?"
"You will."
"Most assuredly."
But the only thing that was assured then was that I would have the chance to learn how to craft


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some of the screens, tables, chairs, and cabinets that Uncle Sardit produced. Every once in a
while, I knew, someone traveled from Candar or even from one of the trading cities of Austra to
purchase one of his screens or inlaid tables.
Until I had a better idea of what I really wanted to do in life, woodworking was better than
helping my father keep all the stonework spotless or mixing clays or tending the kiln fire for
mother. Although the same traders who visited Sardit also visited my mother's shop, I did not have
the touch for pottery. Besides, pots and vases bored me. So did the intricacies of glazes and
finishes.
So, within days I had left the neat and rambling timbered and stone house where I had grown up,
where I had looked out through the blue-tinted casement window in my bedroom on the herb garden
for the last time. Then, I had walked nearly empty-handed the half-day to my uncle's where I was
installed in the apprentice's quarters over the carpentry. Uncle Sardit's other apprentice,
Koldar, had almost completed his term and was building his own house, with the help of an
apprentice stonemason, a woman named Corso. She was bigger than either of us, but she smiled a
lot, and she and Koldar made a good pair. He was living in the unfinished house alone, but
probably not for long. That meant that until another apprentice came along I had the privacy and
the responsibility of the shop in evenings.
Still, it had been a small shock to realize that I would not be living in the guest room at
Uncle Sardit's, but in the much smaller and sparsely-furnished apprentice's space. The only
furniture was the bed, an old woven rug, and a single hanging lamp. The plain red-oak walls
scarcely showed even hairline cracks where the boards joined. The polished floors, also red oak,
displayed the same care and crafting.
"That's what you're here for, Lerris. When you learn how, you can make your own tables,
benches, chairs, in the evenings. Have to fell your own wood and make arrangements with Halprin at
the sawmill for the rough stock to replace what's been seasoned unless you want to try to cut and
rough-cure the logs yourself. Don't recommend that."
Sardit as a craft-master was a bit different than as an uncle.
I was going to learn about carpentry, and tools, and how to make screens and cabinets and
tables, right? Not exactly. To begin with, it was just like the pottery shop, but worse. I'd heard
about clays and consistencies and glazes and firing temperatures for years. I hadn't realized that
woodworking was similar-not until Uncle Sardit reminded me forcefully.