The Legend of El Shashi Read Online Free Page B

I would be less than useless come the morn. I dreamed of last anna’s disastrous proposition to Rubiny and how she had tongue-thrashed me until I fled from her presence, and later of the carter and his dire prediction for my journey. My sleep was ill, my dreams Ulim-haunted.
    The first word to pass my lips when dawn broke was a curse.
    Beyond the low hills of Shaly Ridge, five days beyond Telmak Lodge, the route changed from a deep-rutted cart track into a proper road paved in burgundy-coloured wishbone bricks. Sowing season had at last yielded to Springtide. This region was well named the breadbasket of Umarik, for here the fruit plantations of the ridge’s northern face turned to ripening fields of grain: moxi and lymat in the higher regions, and verdant hewehat where the road abutted the stream locally called the Silcan, which meandered sleepily from the Urm Hills to the walled town of Elaki Fountain, whence I was bound.
    Thus my mind turned to my vegetables, the kale, lohki, renj , and limmerwort, and the herbs which would only grow in the mountains, and I began to calculate the profit I might turn this week. As the piles of terls and ukals mounted in my head, I began to smile. When I saw the bustling crowd at the towering town gates, I whistled a merry tune.
    I banished the trader’s grephe, and Rubiny, from my thoughts.
    *  *  *  *
    The marketplace was heaving. Jammed against the three-man-tall sandstone defensive ramparts at the southern end of town, it perfectly captured the suns’ reflected heat. Bloodlike runnels of russet clay dust, scuffed up by a thousand boots, streaked my forehead and neck as though I had been daubed with costly Lanthrian dye. Jatha lowed, swine squealed, and caged lyoms screeched their fear. The stench of dung and faeces overpowered all else. Three days running, I paid a waterboy to fetch sustenance rather than leave my stall. Because another border spat with the Lymarians to the north had flared up, Janos’ swords fetched nearly half again what I had expected. My cart emptied rapidly and my purse knocked weightily upon my thigh. I envisaged a return days earlier than usual.
    Perhaps, I mused, I should sample the city’s entertainments before I left? There were no such diversions beneath Janos’ watchful eye. Indeed not.
    Although I stank like those swine!
    Nothing a makh or two in the pumphouse would not remedy, and then … ay. As the shadows lengthened that day, I was in an expansive mood, haggling more out of habit than need. My eyes touched the Songstrel spire that was Elaki Fountain’s signature feature, a delicate finger of rosy palisk-quartz from which the dioni and daimi orisons were daily and seasonally sung to the Gods, calculating that sunset was less than a makh distant. In my hands I held the last and finest Lykki short sword.
    “Hold, trader!” A bear’s-paw of a hand stopped the blood in my wrist. “Let me see that blade.”
    This man towered head and shoulders above me, and I am no stripling. His visage was a battlefield of scars.
    “But I’ve a customer already.”
    I stared up at the man’s lips, parted in a salikweed-stained snarl. Use of the weed, which is said to be addictive and grants a man berserker strength in combat, stains the lips, teeth , and gums a bluish-purple. It also kills. This man would not live beyond his thirtieth anna. “Your customer,” growled the lips, “is no longer interested in this weapon.”
    The other man said, “But I –”
    The giant’s grip tightened until I yelped in pain. “He isn’t interested.”
    My bones ground together like a poorly greased cart wheel. From the corner of my eye, I saw my erstwhile customer bolt. No fool he. But that left me with the big ape. Should I yell …? No. Instead, I tried a nervous bluster, “I’ll summon the guard if you don’t back off–”
    “There’s no need for nastiness. Release him, Tortha.”
    Her voice was honey to my ears, and the stillness of a forest pool enshrouded