"David Eddings. Pawn of prophecy queen of sorcery magician's gambit (The Belgariad, Part one)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"What if she won't come?" Garion hedged.
"Garion!" There was a note of awful finality in Aunt Pol's tone, and
Garion fled.
"I didn't have anything to do with it," Zubrette lied as soon as Garion
led her to Aunt Pol in the kitchen.
"You," Aunt Pol said, pointing at a stool, "sit!"
Zubrette sank onto the stool, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
"You," Aunt Pol said to Garion, pointing at the kitchen door, "outl"
Garion left hurriedly.
Ten minutes later a sobbing little girl stumbled out of the kitchen.
Aunt Pol stood in the doorway looking after her with eyes as hard as ice.
"Did you thrash her?" Garion asked hopefully.
Aunt Pol withered him with a glance. "Of course not," she said. "You
don't thrash girls."
"I would have," Garion said, disappointed. "What did you do to her?"
"Don't you have anything to do?" Aunt Pol asked.
"No," Garion said, "not really."
That, of course, was a mistake.
"Good," Aunt Pol said, finding one of his ears. "It's time you started
to earn your way. You'll find some dirty pots in the scullery. I'd like to
have them scrubbed."
"I don't know why you're angry with me," Garion objected, squirming.
"It wasn't my fault that Doroon went up that tree."
"The scullery, Garion," she said. "Now."
The rest of that spring and the early part of the summer were quiet.
Doroon, of course, could not play until his arm mended, and Zubrette had
been so shaken by whatever it was that Aunt Pol had said to her that she
avoided the two other boys. Garion was left with only Rundorig to play
with, and Rundorig was not bright enough to be much fun. Because there was
really nothing else to do, the boys often went into the fields to watch
the hands work and listen to their talk.
As it happened, during that particular summer the men on Faldor's farm
were talking about the Battle of Vo Mimbre, the most cataclysmic event in
the history of the west. Garion and Rundorig listened, enthralled, as the
men unfolded the story of how the hordes of Kal Torak had quite suddenly
struck into the west some five hundred years before.
It had all begun in 4865, as men reckoned time in that part of the
world, when vast multitudes of Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls had struck
down across the mountains of the eastern escarpment into Drasnia, and
behind them in endless waves had come the uncountable numbers of the
Malloreans.
After Drasnia had been brutally crushed, the Angaraks had turned
southward onto the vast grasslands of Algaria and had laid siege to that
enormous fortress called the Algarian Stronghold. The siege had lasted for
eight years until finally, in disgust, Kal Torak had abandoned it. It was
not until he turned his army westward into Ulgoland that the other
kingdoms became aware that the Angarak invasion was directed not only
against the Alorns but against all of the west. In the summer of 4875 Kal
Torak had come down upon the Arendish plain before the city of Vo Mimbre,
and it was there that the combined armies of the west awaited him.