"Stephen Lawhead - Pendragon Cycle 05 - Grail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

PROLOGUE

Men are such pathetic, lumpen things - so predictable in their appetites,
such slaves to their tedious desires and pleasures. Creatures of dull habit
and savage compulsion, they waver between one and the other, never
perceiving anything of the world beyond their animal passions. Why, the
cattle of the field know more of life.
Ah, but it is all too easy. I have long since tired of their trivial ambitions
and endeavours. Ignorant brutes, they deserve every misfortune their beast
of a god can rain down upon them.
Where is real strength? Where is true courage? Where is genuine
discipline harnessed to uncompromising volition, and both allied in total
harmony, each subject to the other? Where are such treasures to be found?
On the battlefield, in the heat of the fight? Ha! That is what men think, and
as in all else they are vastly mistaken. War is children with dirty faces
squabbling over the dungheap. In war, life - that single most precious
substance in the universe - is bartered cheap, thrown away, wasted, traded
for a prize which will not last beyond the changing of the seasons. Fools,
all of them! Blind, ignorant fools - it is pure joy tormenting them.
Only that which endures beyond time is worth having.
Well I know it. I, who have given all for the mastery of time and the
elements, know the value of life. Truly, truly, I have spent my life on the
things that endure. Not for nothing am I called the Queen of Air and
Darkness.
 ONE


I, Gwalchavad, Lord of Orcady, write this. And no gentle labour it is. Nor
less rough the reading, I fear. Unlike Myrddin, or the brown-cloaked
clerics, I am no master of the scribbler's craft. God's truth, the sword hilt
better fits my hand than this close-pared reed. Even so, I am assured my
crabbed script will live long after the hand that framed it is dust. This
Brother Aneirin assures me, and he is wise in such things. So be it.
I was born in sight of Ynys Prydain, with my brother and twin, Gwalcmai
- both sons of noble Lot, himself a king of the Orcades. My birth, in itself,
is of small consequence. But for Arthur, I would have lived all my days in
that wild place and never travelled beyond the boundary stones of my
father's island realm; but for Arthur, my life might have passed in hunting,
fishing, and settling the squabbles of petty chieftains. I would never have
heard of the Kingdom of Summer - much less the Grail - and truly, I
would not be writing this at all.
Still, I will persist in my endeavour so you may know the way of it.
Anyone with ears has heard of Arthur and his trials and triumphs; tales
and more tales flood the land from Lloegres to Celyddon. Many bards tell
them now, and a few of the monkish kind have written them, too. A sorry
scribe I may be, though perhaps not least among these gall-stained ink-
spillers.
They speak of wars and battles, and that is right. They tell of brave men
defending the Island of the Mighty with their lives. These tales are good,
and some are even true; I take nothing away from them. But my task is