Lens of the World by R. A. MacAvoy

Author:R. A. MacAvoy
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 1990-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

I end this long discursion and return to Warvala in winter.

I had a reasonable success as a translator, especially when there were to be records kept of the interchange. There was more demand for such skill than I would have thought, for few Northerners bothered to learn the language, and most of the émigrés were not lettered people. My accent was a matter of amusement, for as it turned out my Rayzhia was courtly, of the South (trust Powl to make sure of that), and very few of the traders of Warvala spoke its like. Neither, however, did they object to having a functionary with such elegant drawling vowels, even if he did have hair like a dandelion.

Yule came and went. I spent the holiday alone, but then we had never marked it out at the observatory, either. I was invited to the Deepyear celebrations of Pasten’s silk warehouse, however, and danced the fire dance and the sword dance and drank spirits of cherry, a southern specialty, very soft on the tongue and deadly the next day.

I had so much money I bought lens blanks by the dozen and ground them into spectacles for old men and women who otherwise would have squinted the rest of their lives away.

One of these, a goodwife born in Bologhini and possessing no Velonyan, rewarded me by instruction in all that an educated boy must know, which I had obviously missed by being brought up by the savages of the northern forests. She taught me the proper address to court a girl of rank above, equal to, or below myself. (Certainly there were few in the latter category.) She taught me how to bow, and the techniques of disciplining the mind, which must be learned in various stages to distract the chittering rats that are our thoughts. In turn I told her my history of the black wolf of Gelley, which Powl had

set upon me and which likely would pursue me for the rest of my life, and she retracted everything she had said concerning my education, for this teacher, she stated, had been a master of the mind.

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