"Bud Sparhawk - Magic's Price" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sparhawk Bud)

stiff left fingers as Arthur Thomas had done. By evening's end he was even squinting to give his eyes a
creased, learned look.

“Are you sick or something?” Ev asked when they finally met back at the stable. “Why are you scowling
like that?” Her favorite scarf was in her hand and she appeared flushed. She fidgeted as she adjusted her
clothing inside her cloak. She brushed a few strands of straw from her hair.

And she thought his behavior strange.

“Jacob, did you hurt your arm?” his mother chimed in when she noticed the way he was holding himself.

Jacob sighed and shook his head. “No, I'm fine.” The terribly ordinary women of his family would never
understand the ways of magicians. Neither of his sisters would ever be as worldly as the wondrous,
beautiful, and mysterious Tash Pallas.
****

For as long as Jacob could remember he had wanted to learn magic. He had never felt comfortable
around his dull, shallow, and unimaginative classmates. Not a one of them shared his interest in the
ancient machines and all wondered what he found so interesting about them. Despite their taunts he
maintained his burning desire to learn the mystic arts, a desire that set him apart. “Weird Jacob,” they'd
say and shrug, “But then, what can you expect?” The last part no doubt overheard from their parents.

He'd gotten and given many a black eye after he learned what that oft-repeated slur implied about his
dark-haired father and even darker-haired mother.

But, he sometimes wondered, perhaps there could be a kernel of truth in those veiled accusations. Could
there have been a magician among his ancestors that had endowed him with this red hair? Maybe that
would explain why he was so attracted to the old machines that lay scattered about. None of his
classmates seemed to care about the mysterious forces that powered the mill, that heated some homes
but not others, and that provided heat and light to a few. No one asked about the silent machines in the
fields that refused to rust. They only accepted this without question, and went on with their dull, daily
lives.

The old tales spoke of a time when those machines surged with power, letting a single man farm
thousands of acres. The Kettleman tractor was one of the few machines that continued to function, and
that fact was viewed with suspicious awe.

Dead or not, all of the old devices were both fascinating and intriguing to Jacob. He'd often imagined
himself a magician as he probed the machinery's innards. When he was much younger he'd tried to
restore a broken grinder with a wave of his hand, to fix the a broken plough with a touch of his little
finger, and to bring a blackened lamp to life with a single intense stare. But none of these actions
produced any result, no matter how hard he tried. Perhaps it took more than skill and desire. Perhaps it
was a magician's inherent ability.

As he grew older and wiser he learned how to fix simple mechanisms, such as the broken linkage on the
heater—much to his mother's appreciation—and which got him an extra large slice of warm apple pie.
When simple repairs of household things no longer held his interest he turned his attention to the more
complex, but inoperative devices stored in the barn, where they had been dumped for lack of a better
place. Who knew, his father often said, but they might someday provide useful.
 His attempts to study these ancient devices were frustrating. He couldn't understand the machines’