Prince of the Blood. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ and left him behind. Odd feelings of giddy delight and childish tears clashed inside him. He took a long breath to calm himself. James had discovered he was a man of deep passions since coming to Arutha’s service, but they were rarely shown to others, another legacy of his dangerous youth spent with those for whom displays of emotions other than anger were considered admissions of weakness. But what was triggering these sudden feelings?

      Lacking a satisfying answer, he heaved himself out of the pool and raced headlong for the lake, yelling a boy’s shout of frustration released. He dove under and came up spitting water. A sound of relief escaped him as the cold lake seemed to shock him to full wakefulness.

      He was an indifferent swimmer but enjoyed the occasion from time to time. Like most children of Krondor’s Poor Quarter, when the hot winds of summer blew he had sought relief at the harbour side, diving from the piers into the salt water and refuse. The sensation of clean water upon his body was something he had remained ignorant of until well into his thirteenth year.

      James found himself swimming lazily toward the far side of the inlet. The trees and reeds cut into the water, providing a series of narrow passages to whatever lay upon the other side of the inlet. He picked his way through, half-swimming, half-paddling, until he came to a thick stand of reeds and grasses. He saw the grasses and reeds were wide-spaced, allowing ample vision of the shoreline. He turned upon his back and kicked lazily. Above him, the morning sky turned brilliant, as the sun was now full upon the day. The clouds were white and beautiful as they sped their course across the heavens. Then he was in the grasses, seeing stalks rise high above his head as he felt their ticklish caress while he swam. After a few minutes of swimming this way, he righted himself and glanced about.

      Things appeared different and the way back not apparent. Calm by nature, he found the notion of swimming in circles within the reeds an unappealing one but not a fearful one. He remembered Pug’s words and saw the grasses all bending to his left. He would simply swim to where he felt ground underfoot and walk out.

      Within a minute, he felt the shore under his toes. He walked through thick reeds and tall grasses, toward a line of trees at the water’s edge. The hanging branches and thick greenery plunged him into shadows while he was still up to his chest in the water. He could only see a few feet in any direction, and the morning light made everything a pattern of murk and blinding blue-white sky above. James followed the rising bottom until he was in water below his waist. He felt foolish to be striding around naked, but as there was no one about, he would only need a short scamper back to the pool where he had left his clothing.

      James took a step and suddenly found himself falling into deep water. A current had eroded a small channel to a depth more than his six feet and he came up sputtering and blind. He paddled to the far side and again felt land under him.

      A birdcall above him made him wonder if the creature was laughing at his clumsy progress. Sighing, he continued toward the shore, which was but a few yards away, judging by the glimpses of land he got between the trees. With the water at his knees, he was confronted with an impassable barrier of trees and reeds, a rocky overhang rising up to shoulder height. He moved to his right, toward what seemed a closer exit from the foliage that conspired to trap him, and again felt a drop beneath his feet. He settled down to chest-high water and pushed through a very thick curtain of reeds. His progress was slow and he could only move a few feet at a time. His overwhelming feeling was one of unalloyed stupidity for finding himself so distant from where he wanted to be. Pleasant swim before breakfast, indeed.

      As his knees brushed a ridge of lake bottom, signalling an end to the channel he was wading through, he parted the reeds before him. Abruptly, James found himself confronted by a sight totally unexpected. Fair skin, white as a newborn’s, was revealed merely a yard before him. And by circumstance of his depressed perspective, he was staring directly at the naked backside of a young woman. Her nearly white-blond hair hung wet from her head as she squeezed water from it, a pose which conspired to display her hips and buttocks in a slightly exaggerated and flattering pose.

      James’s breath caught in his chest. The same mixed feeling of alarm and excitement struck him like a hammer blow. He felt as embarrassed at his intrusion into her privacy as he would have felt had she found him at his own pool. Conflicting signals to hold motionless, move back, say something, not be discovered, all clashed together and paralyzed him.

      Again his boyhood training overrode conscious thought and he froze in place. Then another thought intruded, and he felt his stomach tighten as a hot rush of excitement gathered in his stomach and groin. Almost aloud he said. It’s about the most beautiful bottom I’ve ever seen.

      Instantly the young woman turned about, her hands flying up to her mouth, as if startled by a noise. In that instant, James discovered that the rest of her was equal to what he had already seen. Her figure was slender, like a dancer’s, and her arms and neck were long and elegant, her stomach flat, her breasts not large, but full and lovely. As her hand dropped away from her face, he saw a high forehead, fine cheekbones, and pale, slightly pink lips. Her eyes, wide in astonishment, were the blue of midwinter’s ice. All these details were etched in his mind in an instant. A thousand instants of recognition flooded through James, and in each he knew the young woman before him was at once the most wonderful and terrifying sight he had ever beheld. Then those beautiful pale blue eyes narrowed and suddenly pain exploded in James’s head.

      He fell back as if struck by a weapon, and his voice cried out hollow in his own ears as he went beneath the water’s surface. Sharp knives of hot agony filled his mind as water filled his mouth. James sank into the murk of the water as he lost consciousness.

      In a place which was not a place James swam, drowning in memories: his playing upon the street cobbles and never a moment passing without the fear. Strangers were a danger, yet every day brought strangers into his mother’s house. Men who were loud and frightening passed the boy each day, some ignoring him, others attempting to amuse him for a brief moment with a pat upon the head or an odd word.

      Then the night when she died and no one came: the man with the crooked smile had heard him cry and fled. Jimmy had found his way out of the house, his child’s feet padding through the sticky blood on the floor.

      Then the fights with the other boy for the bone and the bread crust left out behind the inns and taverns, eating the raw wheat and corn that spilled from under the grain wagons at the dockside. And the drops of bitter wine in the almost empty bottle. The occasional coin from a generous passerby to buy a hot pie. Hunger was always there.

      A voice in the dark, no face to remember, asked him if he was clever. He had been clever. Very clever. His beginning with the Mockers.

      Danger around, at all times. No friends, no allies, only the rules of the guild to protect Jimmy the Hand. But he was gifted; the Upright Man forgave small trespasses from one who brought in so much wealth at such an early age.

      Then the man with the crooked smile reappeared. Jimmy had been twelve. It had been nothing of proud honour and hot revenge. A boy thief had crept in and dosed the drunk’s wine with a poison purchased from a man dealing in such things. The man with the crooked smile died without knowing his murderer’s reasons, his face blackening as his tongue protruded through swollen lips and his eyes bulging, while the son of a murdered whore watched through a crack in the ceiling of the flop house where he lay. Jimmy had felt no triumph, but somehow he hoped his mother rested better. He never knew his mother’s name. He felt as if he wanted to cry but didn’t know how. He had cried twice … no, three times in honesty. When Anita lay stricken and when he thought Arutha dead. That had been grief, and it was not a sign of weakness or shame. But he had cried in the darkness when trapped in the cave with the rock serpent, before Duke Martin had saved him. He could never admit to his fear.

      Other images: his incredible, almost inhuman skills in the calling. His discovery that СКАЧАТЬ