"David Eddings. Castle of wizardry enchanters' end game (The Belgariad, Part two)" - читать интересную книгу автора

misunderstood."
"People who live in caves have no desire to see anyone trapped like
that."
Polgara, however, was considering the rubble-blocked passageway. "We
have to get her out of there," she declared.
"Relg could be right, you know," Barak pointed out. "For all we know,
she's buried under half the mountain."
She shook her head. "No," she disagreed. "Taiba's still alive, and we
can't leave without her. She's as important to all of this as any one of
us." She turned back to Relg. "You'll have to go get her," she told him
firmly.
Relg's large, dark eyes widened.
"You can't ask that," he protested.
"There's no alternative."
"You can do it, Relg," Durnik encouraged the zealot. "You can go
through the rock and bring her out the same way you carried Silk out of
that pit where Taur Urgas had him."
Relg had begun to tremble violently. "I can't!" his voice was choked.
"I'd have to touch her - put my hands on her. It's sin."
"This is most uncharitable of thee, Relg," Mandorallen told him. "There
is no sin in giving aid to the weak and helpless. Consideration for the
unfortunate is a paramount responsibility of all decent men, and no force
in all the world can corrupt the pure spirit. If compassion doth not move
thee to fly to her aid, then mayest thou not perhaps regard her rescue a
test of thy purity?"
"You don't understand," Relg told him in an anguished voice. He turned
back to Polgara. "Don't make me do this, I beg you."
"You must," she replied quietly. "I'm sorry, Relg, but there's no other
way."
A dozen emotions played across the fanatic's face as he shrank under
Aunt Pol's unrelenting gaze. Then with a strangled cry, he turned and put
his hand to the solid rockface at the side of the passageway. With a
dreadful concentration, he pushed his fingers into the rock, demonstrating
once more his uncanny ability to slip his very substance through seemingly
unyielding stone.
Silk quickly turned his back. "I can't stand to watch that," the little
man choked. And then Relg was gone, submerged in the rock.
"Why does he make so much fuss about touching people?" Barak demanded.
But Garion knew why. His enforced companionship with the ranting zealot
during the ride across Algaria had given him a sharp insight into the
workings of Relg's mind. The harsh-voiced denunciations of the sins of
others served primarily to conceal Relg's own weakness. Garion had
listened for hours at a time to hysterical and sometimes incoherent
confessions about the lustful thoughts that raged through the fanatic's
mind almost continually. Taiba, the lush-bodied Marag slave woman, would
represent for Relg the ultimate temptation, and he would fear her more
than death itself.
In silence they waited. Somewhere a slow drip of water measured the
passing seconds. The earth shuddered from time to time as the last uneasy
shocks of earthquake trembled beneath their feet. The minutes dragged on