Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 04 by The Blood of a Dragon

Author:The Blood of a Dragon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-06-03T20:15:48+00:00

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Chapter Twenty-Three

When Dumery woke he found himself lying on something warm and soft, surrounded by the scents of soap and lavender. He heard gentle creakings and rustlings and thumps, the sounds of a household going about its ordinary business.

It took a moment before he had the nerve to open his eyes, but when he did he was looking up at an undistinguished plank ceiling.

His eyes worked their way down from there.

He was in a small bedroom, lying in a well-fluffed featherbed, under a fine warm blanket. Blue sky was visible through the one window. A washstand stood at the bedside, and two plain wooden chairs were nearby. A boy perhaps half his own age was standing at the window, looking out at the World.

Dumery coughed.

The boy turned, looked at him, then ran to the door of the room and shouted something in some language other than Ethsharitic—Sardironese, presumably.

Then the boy turned back and stared at Dumery.

“Hello,” Dumery said. His voice didn’t sound very good.

The boy just stared.

Footsteps sounded, and people began pouring into the room.

The first was an old man, surely at least sixty years old, Dumery thought. He had been a big man once, and was still tall, but he was bent now, and his muscles sagged, rather than bulged. His left arm was gone from the elbow down, the long-healed stump projecting from the shortened sleeve of his tunic.

Behind this rather frightening figure came a swarm of small children—Dumery thought there were four of them, but they moved about so much he wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t missed one.

And finally, a black-haired woman, small and pretty, appeared and stood in the doorway.

The one-armed old man said something in Sardironese.

Dumery blinked up at him, and tried to sit up, but wound up leaning on one elbow instead.

“Does anyone here…” he began, before being interrupted by a cough. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Does anyone here speak Ethsharitic?” he asked.

“Yes,” the old man said. “Of course I do. Could never have done much business without it. Is it your only language? You don’t know any Sardironese?”

Dumery nodded.

“That’s too bad,” the old man said. “The little ones won’t be able to follow what we’re saying, then.” He smiled. “Well, when I tell them all about it later I can dress it up a little, make it sound better, right?”

As he spoke, the woman in the doorway slipped away.

A girl, perhaps four years old, tugged at the old man’s tunic and asked him a question in Sardironese.

The old man answered, and Dumery caught a word that sounded like “Ethsharit” in his reply.

The girl asked another question, and the old man shook his head. “Ku den nor Sardironis,” he said.

The child started to ask again, but the man held up a hand and said something. Dumery could only guess what all this was about, and he was still too battered and worn to give it much thought, but he supposed the girl had wanted to know why he and the old man were talking funny.

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