The Burning City by Niven Larry & Pournelle Jerry

Author:Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry [Niven, Larry & Pournelle, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror
ISBN: 9781439120187
Goodreads: 10047188
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2000-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

42

After dinner he left the Ropewalkers and Millers working on the wagon. Carver sent a dirty look after him, a look he was meant to catch. He stopped. He said, “Carter, maybe you’d better come with me.”

Carter trotted to Whandall’s side, but, “This is work,” Carver said, as if Whandall might not recognize it on sight. “We need all the hands we can get.”

“I made a bargain with Hickamore, the wizard,” Whandall informed them all. “If I don’t keep it, we’ll be paying Kettle Belly a fourth of what we own. So I’m going to tell him stories about Morth—”

“But why Carter? He doesn’t speak Condigeano!”

“Carter might have seen things about Morth that I didn’t. The younger children would miss anything subtle, and you weren’t there, Carver. While Willow and I were dealing with Morth, you were a day’s walk away dealing with a cart and mare that you had left behind. But I could take Willow instead.”

“Oh, Whandall, I think they need me here,” Willow said with apparent regret. “Take Carter.”

Carver began pounding a post into the ground. Carter and Whandall went to Hickamore’s wagon.

The shaman and his family sat under the stars. They must have had first choice of campsites; the circle of rocks around his fire was almost too convenient as a conversation pit.

“My children, these are Whandall and Carter, surely the most unusual of visitors to our home.” How had Hickamore known Carter’s name? Magic. “Folk, greet my daughters Rutting Deer and Twisted Cloud, and their friends Fawn and Mountain Cat.”

Twisted Cloud was just turned fourteen, quite pretty in the local fashion, high cheekbones and arched brows and straight dark hair. She had Carter’s full attention. Running Deer (the shaman couldn’t have said Rutting Deer, could he?) was seventeen, with that same look, exotic to Whandall. Fawn didn’t say, but she looked to be the same age. Fawn was pretty enough, but Running Deer was Twisted Cloud made mature: tall and lovely, with dark straight hair sculpted into a single braid. Mountain Cat was eighteen or nineteen and finely dressed. He was with Fawn or with Twisted Cloud—it was difficult to tell which—but he didn’t want the barbarians near either of them.

Whandall sat aside. Even among lookers he knew how to avoid knifeplay.

The girls chattered. “Willow,” Twisted Cloud said. “Why is she named Willow?”

“It’s their way,” Fawn said. “Like Ruby. Something precious.”

Twisted Cloud nodded understanding. “It’s hard to find. Maybe they don’t have any in the Valley of Smokes?”

The old man offered Whandall wine. Whandall asked for river water instead. Twisted Cloud scowled, knowing she’d be sent to the cistern to fetch it, and she was.

Hickamore asked, “When did you first see Morth of Atlantis?”

“He was in Lord Samorty’s courtyard below Shanda’s balcony, talking to the Lords. He looked decrepit, then, and amused. I was only a little boy, but even I could see that he thought they were all fools. They saw it too, I think, but they thought he was wearing it. A wizard’s attitude, like the Lords’ attitudes they all wore like masks.

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