"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 2 - With a Single Spell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

calling wildly for help.


CHAPTER 2

He watched disconsolately as the cottage burned. The entire structure was
going up in smoke, its complete contents with it, and he could do nothing but
sit and watch.
This, he thought sorrowfully, beyond any possible doubt, beyond any
chance of recovery or hope of salvage, marked the end of his apprenticeship,
any sort of apprenticeship. As if his master's death had not been bad enough,
taking away the last person in all the World who cared a whit for him, now,
just a few hours after the funeral, he had accidentally destroyed everything
the old man had left him. His home and all his worldly possessions, save the
clothes he wore and the few precious items on his belt, were vanishing before
his eyes, being reduced to smoke and ash.
Roggit's Book of Spells was certainly gone, and just as certainly no
other wizard would take him on as an apprentice. He was seventeen, what sort
of a wizard would take on a lad of seventeen under any conditions, let alone
one who had as yet learned so little of the arcane arts? He had learned the
basic secret of wizardry, true -- that secret was the nature of the athame,
the ritual dagger that each wizard prepared and that held a part of its
master's soul. Beyond that, though, he knew only his single spell. What could
a wizard do with a single spell?
He had little chance of finding any other employment in Telven or the
surrounding area; even an advantageous marriage was more than he could hope
for, since he had no favors to call in, no close relatives who would help in
arranging a betrothal, and no prospects for a love match. He was quite sure
that nobody who knew anything of his past would want anything to do with him,
especially after this latest disaster, for fear his bad luck might be
contagious.
He sighed. He hadn't always been unlucky, or at least he hadn't thought
so, but now, as he mentally reviewed his life, he wasn't so sure. Certainly it
had been a bad sign when his mother died bearing him; that was hardly an
auspicious start for any child.
Other than that, however, he had done well enough until he was fifteen.
He had been happy with his father's cousin Indamara and her husband, the two
of whom had raised him in his parents' absence, and he had gotten on well with
their children, his second cousins. He had had no more than the usual number
of childhood mishaps -- falls from trees every so often, almost drowning in a
farmer's pond once, nothing out of the ordinary. He had missed the plague that
killed a few of the neighbors when he was eight and had come through a bout of
pox unscarred. Life had been good to him throughout those years; he had played
in the fields with the other children, taken long walks with his father
whenever the ship was in port, and generally lived the normal, happy life of
the son of a successful pirate.
Privateer, he corrected himself; his father had been a privateer,
defending the Free Lands of the Coasts from the tyranny of the Ethsharites.
That was what all the neighbors said.
He had never quite understood how robbing merchant vessels kept the