The Land's Whisper Read Online Free Page A

up. His eyes turned severe.
“What do you want, Darse?”
    Darse met the man’s gaze. He did not return
the fire, but stood tall, evidencing his own strength. “Your son
Mart’s inducting?”
    Treak flinched, and he drew his lips into a
false smile. “Requested the honor. I’ve been eager to send Mart
since he was born. I didn’t even try to find apprenticeships.”
    Darse paused, again pondering. I’ve saved
every spare drale all season. Why waste it on him? Yet despite
his dislike of Treak, Darse found his hand already reaching toward
his money fold at his chest pocket.
    “Treak? Don’t induct your son. Really. I…I
will pay his tax this season.” Darse drew out three marks,
extending them in hand.
    Treak’s eyes sparked in a moment of hope,
but the sentiment flickered out just as abruptly, and his features
tightened in disdain. “You’re just as your da was,” he said. He
stepped forward to leave, but then turned and spit, first on the
palmed offering and then upon Darse’s boot.
    Darse peered down at his damp, sticky hand,
then up at the farmer.
    Treak glowered and strode from the square in
heat, his speed exaggerating the limp.
    Darse shook his head. That fool’d rather
give up his son than take my money.
    He wiped his hand clean, returned to his
abandoned sack in the square, and slid into the queue to purchase
his annual conscription pass.
    ~
    Darse’s day proved arduous, the bulk of it
elapsing under the sun’s blaze in the unending conscription line.
The scrutar had come but a septspan after Darse’s final harvesting
of corz, but even the poor timing could not be blamed for
the yellowing mold stretching across half their rinds. There was no
time to sell locally, let alone travel to a neighboring village. On
a whim, Darse had loaded a sack full of the unblemished crop and
hauled it into town. He had thought perhaps he might see some luck,
but it was not to be so.
    Darse shouldered the burden back the five
matroles to his field and set the bag in the cool of the barn. The
remaining span before sundown became a race with light. He sprinted
about to his steel. They were empty, save for a single ragged
rabbit, which he killed and stuffed into his gaming sack. He
fetched and tended Button, his dairy cow, and chased his handful of
chickens into their coop. He glanced regretfully at the rows of
crops he could not attend, but he soaked in the sharp, striking
loveliness of the sunset for a moment, lighting his lantern before
entering the barn.
    Darse upended the contents of the morning’s
sack upon the hay-strewn ground. The corz rolled gently and settled
while he selected and tossed the pieces that had turned in the heat
and reserved those that could keep until he had the chance to dry
the greenest and pickle the rest. He frowned, glancing across to
the barrel that held the molding fruit; it would take a miracle of
time to beat it.
    He scooped up one of the ripe orange
spheres, closed up the barn, and strode back to his home. Now it
was dark, and the moon hardly shed a sprinkling of light for him.
He inhaled a few deep breaths of cool air before bolting himself in
for the evening.
    Dinner consisted of the few bites he could
scavenge from the rabbit and the corz, which he cooked and peeled
and ate without relish . He drank a cup of milk and set to
churning the remainder.
    His eyes gazed upon the smooth floorboards
that his father had placed, the beams at the ceiling he had
meticulously carved and set.
    “I wish you had abandoned this house,” he
said under breath, as if his father’s ghost lingered beside his
handiwork. “And never made me promise to stay.”
    Darse tidied the house for the night, shut
off his lantern, and crawled onto his pallet. His muscles ached in
their usual exhaustion, but that was not what wearied him most. He
lay silently, hearing the wind sway through the trees outside, and
eventually slept.
    ~
    Darse awoke with dawn and groaned to life.
He milked and released Button, checked