"Mercedes Lackey - Owl Mage 1 - Owlflight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

done by magic? It’s stupid, that’s all it is, it’s just as pointless as everything else in this village!
“Try again,” Justyn ordered him, with a kind of weary disgust that angered Darian even further.
What right did that old fake have to be disgusted with him? It wasn’t his fault that he had no magic! And
as far as that was concerned, Justyn had no room to find fault with Darian on that score!
How long has it been since he did anything with real magic? I bet he couldn’t have kept
that apple in the air any longer than I did!
Anger and frustration rose to the boiling point, and instead of doing as he was told, he swept his
arm across the table in front of him, knocking apple, plate, and anything else in the path of that angry
sweep off the table and onto the floor with a crash. The plate didn’t shatter, since it was made of pewter,
but it made a lot of noise and acquired yet another dent. As Justyn opened his mouth to scold, Darian
shoved his chair away from the table, sitting there with his arms folded over his chest, glowering, silently
daring Justyn to do his worst.
Justyn visibly pushed down his own temper. “Darian, I want you to try again,” the wizard
repeated, with mounting impatience. “And since you won’t do it properly, you can pick that apple up off
the floor and put it back on the table with your mind - yes, and the plate as well! A bit more hard work
will teach you to control your temper. A mage can’t ever lose his temper, or - “
“Why?” Darian snarled defiantly, interrupting the lecture on self-control that he had heard a
hundred times already. “Why should I use my mind to float fruit around? There’s no reason to! It’s faster
and easier to grab it like any normal person would!” And just to prove his point, he bent down and
seized apple and plate and banged both down on the wooden tabletop. “There! Now that’s what a
person with plain common sense does! You don’t have to muck around with these stupid tricks to get
things done!”
Now, of course, was the moment when Justyn would launch into a lecture on how in magic one
must practice on small things before one could expect to succeed in the larger, how he was being
immature and childish, and how very ungrateful he was. Next would follow how it was criminal that he
refused to obey, that he had such a wonderful gift and was apprenticed to a wizard who would teach him
skills, and didn’t appreciate his easy circumstances when instead he could have been bound out to a
farmer or the blacksmith -
Darian knew it all by heart and could have recited it in his sleep. And it wouldn’t make any
difference if he protested that he didn’t want to be a wizard, that he hadn’t asked for this so-called
“wonderful gift,” and that he didn’t see what was so wonderful about it. Justyn would ignore his protests,
just as everyone else had, and did, and always would. For some reason that he did not fathom, every
other person in the village was astonished that he didn’t appreciate being farmed out to the old fake.
But just at that point, there were sounds of thumping and a grunt of pain outside. Harris and Vere
Neshem, a pair of the local farmers, staggered in through the door with Kyle Osterham the woodcutter
supported between them, his leg wrapped in rags stained with fresh, red blood. Darian jumped
immediately out of his chair and moved aside for them, shoving the chair in their direction.
“He was chopping up a stump and his footing slipped,” Vere said, as they lowered Kyle down
into the seat Darian had just vacated. “Bit of a mess. Good thing we were close by.”
Since Justyn served Errold’s Grove in the capacity of a Healer far more often than that of a
wizard, Darian had seen men who were worse wounded stagger in through the door, but Kyle’s leg was
a bit of a mess. Surface cut, he noted critically. Ax blade probably hit the shin bone and skinned
along the top of it. That’d peel back a lot of skin, but it’ll heal quickly as soon as it’s stitched, and
it won’t leave much of a scar. Lucky if he didn’t break the shin, though. It would bleed a lot, and
hurt a great deal, but it was hardly life-threatening. He edged out of the way a little more and got nearer
the door.
Justyn rummaged through the shelves behind him, grabbing rags, herbs, a needle and fine silk
thread, a mortar and pestle.
“Darian, boil some water,” he ordered, his back to the room as he hunted for something he
needed.