"Andre Norton - WW - 26 The Mage Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

creeping monsters that spouted liquid fire and battered through gates and walls along our coast. I thank
the Amber Lady that your death was clean, by swordblade. Even now, when my dreams are troubled by
fragments of remembered battles, I burn with regret that I was not at your side, to live or die together
with you.

But I was away, traveling far inland when Vennesport was attacked and our trading storehouses were
plundered. Those were times of waking nightmares. As I fled toward the western mountains, a fellow
refugee passed me word of your fate. I think if I had been alone, I would have turned back then, to seek
my death in the fighting--but I could not ignore my Robnore clan obligations. Uncle Parand was among
those killed in the sacking of Vennesport. All of Mother's remaining brothers and most of our coastal
trading colleagues were suddenly gone. The surviving remnants of the Clan turned to me for leadership.
Grieving and distressed, I felt they were making a hopeless choice, but I could not deny their pleas for
direction.

For weeks of torment that stretched into months, I scarcely ate or slept or paused to think. Always,
always I longed for you. I stumbled onward, forcing myself to envisage what you would have done to
meet each new crisis. Memories of you served as my anchor; without them, I would have been
overwhelmed by despair.

Constantly, I reminded myself that we had been separated more often than we had been together. You
said once that our letters linking us while apart could comprise an ample chronicle--except no scribe
could read our secret script. Despite the turmoil of the war and my travels since, I have preserved some
few of your letters, together with the little sketch of you that Halbec made during your long-ago trading
voyage aboard his ship. These documents are my most treasured possessions--your lasting legacy to
me.

Another very different legacy has driven me to endure this unseasonable voyage. I suspect that you
would shake your head ruefully at the surface appearance of my recent behavior. You would ask how,
after more than sixty years as a trader, I could turn my back on all that I knew to pursue the flimsiest of
hopes? I can hear you say it--chasing moonbeams or catching snowflakes would be more profitable than
this journey promises to be. Yet if only I could lay my reasoning before you--of all the people I have
ever known, you would be the most likely to understand why I must dare this quest. I believe you would
urge me to seize this chance, however slight or foolish it seems.

Dear Doubt . . . you were always an eminently cautious, deliberate man. Uncle Parand once said you
were the most prudent risk-taker he knew, for you constantly weighed every possible gain against any
potential loss before you committed yourself. No matter what later obstacles arose, you would press on
until you accomplished your task.

I had observed a similar strain of persistence in my mother. It was her force of will that converted
Father's improved breed of sheep into the foundation of our trading success. I have been told that I am
as obstinate as she was, so the three of us shared the trait, for I recall times when each of us accused the
others of excessive willfulness.

Habits honed in one's work, especially when rewarded, often spill over into other aspects of life. I think
of the hours you and I spent together compiling kinship lists. How excited you were to discover that one
of your forebears claimed blood-ties to our Robnore Clan. You rode leagues to search for verifying
documents, and brought half the dust from an abbey's archives back with you. We pored over lists for so
many families. I shall never forget those parchments stored in the wax-lined sea chest from Wark. You
said there could be no doubt of that clan's devotion to their trade, since every bundle of records for