"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 07 - The magic Engineer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

"DAMN IT, DORRIN!" The smith takes the short length of metal, already bearing a blackish sheen,
even while it retains a straw brown color, and uses the tongs to set it on the brick hearth beside
the anvil.
The youth flushes, the red from the forge combining with the red of chagrin climbing up from
his neck. "I'm sorry, Hegl."
"Bein' sorry don't count a whole lot. Now, I got a chunk of black-ordered steel that's useless.
Don't fit nothing, and nothing but a wizard's hearth gets hot enough to melt that. Darkness, you
dump so much order in things, Nylan himself couldn't have forged it." Hegl snorts. "Not much call
for black steel, anyway, but you don't order it until it's finished. What were you thinking of?"
"How it would look when you were done."
The smith shakes his head. "Go on. Let me finish. I'll send Kadara for you when it's time."
Dorrin swallows and turns, walking toward the open double doors designed to funnel the cool air
through the smithy. Behind him, the smith extracts another rod of iron from the bin and lifts it
toward the furnace.
The redhead holds his narrow lips so tightly they almost turn white. He has persuaded his
father to let him spend time with Hegl, and if Hegl will not have him .. .
He steps through the open doors and out toward the wash-stones, where he pauses and splashes
his face with the cool water, letting it carry away the heat of the smithy and the embarrassment.
After pumping a drink from the spout, he leans toward the garden fed by the runoff from the
washstones. Neatly edged in fitted gray stone, the different colored leaves of the herbs, and the
few purple-flowered brinn plants, have formed almost mathematically precise rectangles.
Dorrin lets his senses touch the herbs, feeling the beginning of root rot in the Winterspice,
always a problem, according to his mother, because Recluce was far warmer than the climes of
Nordla. With the practice borne of training, his senses enfold the Winterspice, adding the
strength the bluish-green-leaved spice needs to resist the dark fungal growths.
Out of habit, he checks the others, even the rosemary in the drier upper stone garden. With a
shake of his head that displaces not a strand of his tight-curled and wiry red hair, he
straightens.
"I wondered why my spices have grown so true this year." A gray-haired and stocky woman stands
by the washstones.
"Your pardon," offers Dorrin.
"My gain, you mean, if you have even a fraction of the skill of your mother." She smiles. "Why
are you out here?"
"Wandering thoughts," confesses the youth. "I thought about the wrong thing and turned an
unfinished ingot into black steel. Hegl was less than pleased."
"He would not be," affirms the smith's wife. "But he will find some use for it, if only to
demonstrate the strength of his work."
Dorrin shakes his head.
"Kadara will not be back from the Temple until later ... she has afternoon classes."
"I know. I'm going home until Hegl needs me." The red-haired youth turns and walks down the
flagged path toward the stone paved street.
Behind him, the smith's wife shakes her head for an instant before looking at the herb garden.
She smiles as she studies the plants.
Dorrin's steps carry him past two of the stone-walled and split-stone shingled homes of Extina
before he turns and walks up the stone drive slightly wider than the drives of the neighboring
dwellings. A set of prints in the faint dust that has settled on the short wiry grass indicates


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