"Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea 5 - The Other Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

As soon as the sun's light was cut offby a low rock wall that ran along the top of the
cliff near the house, the cool of the shadow roused the sleeper. He sat up with a shiver,
then stood up, a bit stiff and bewildered, with grass seed in his hair. Seeing his host
filling buckets at the well and lugging them to the garden, he went to help him.
"Three or four more ought to do it," said the ex-Archmage, doling out water to the
roots of a row of young cabbages. The smell of wet dirt was pleasant in the dry, warm
air. The westering light came golden and broken over the ground.
They sat on a long bench beside the house door to see the sun go down. Sparrowhawk
had brought out a bottle and two squat, thick cups of greenish glass. "My wife's son's
wine," he said. "From Oak Farm, in Middle Valley. A good year, seven years back." It
was a flinty red wine that warmed Alder right through. The sun set in calm clarity. The
wind was down. Birds in the orchard trees made a few closing remarks.
Alder had been amazed when he learned from the Master Patterner of Roke that the
Archmage Sparrowhawk, that man of legend, who had brought the king home from the
realm of death and then flown off on a dragon's back, was still alive. Alive, said the
Patterner, and living on his home island, Gont. "I tell you what not many know," the
Patterner had said, "for I think you need to know it. And I think you will keep his
secret."
"But then he is still Archmage!" Alder had said, with a kind of joy: for it had been a
puzzle and concern to all men of the art that the wise men of Roke Island, the school
and center of magery in the Archipelago, had not in all the years of King Lebannen's

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Le Guin, Ursula - [Earthsea 05] The Other Wind

rule named an Archmage to replace Sparrowhawk.
"No," the Patterner had said. "He is not a mage at all."
The Patterner had told him a little of how Sparrowhawk had lost his power, and why;
and Alder had had time to ponder it all. But still, here, in the presence of this man who
had spoken with dragons, and brought back the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, and crossed the
kingdom of the dead, and ruled the Archipelago before the king, all those stories and
songs were in his mind. Even as he saw him old, content with his garden, with no
power in him or about him but that of a soul made by a long life of thought and action,
he still saw a great mage. And so it troubled him considerably that Sparrow-hawk had
a wife.
A wife, a daughter, a stepson… Mages had no family. A common sorcerer like Alder
might marry or might not, but the men of true power were celibate. Alder could
imagine this man riding a dragon, that was easy enough, but to think of him as a
husband and father was another matter. He couldn't manage it. He tried. He asked,
"Your—wife—She's with her son, then?"
Sparrowhawk came back from far away. His eyes had been on the western gulfs. "No,"
he said. "She's in Havnor. With the king."
After a while, coming all the way back, he added, "She went there with our daughter
just after the Long Dance. Lebannen sent for them, to take counsel. Maybe on the same
matter that brings you here to me. We'll see… But the truth is, I'm tired this evening,
and not much disposed to weighing heavy matters. And you look tired too. So a bowl
of soup, maybe, and another glass of wine, and sleep? And we'll talk in the morning."
"All with pleasure, lord," Alder said, "but for the sleep. That's what I fear."
It took the old man a while to register this, but then he said, "You fear to sleep?"
"Dreams."