Son of Avonar Read Online Free PDF Page A

me, while he himself fetched servants and a litter. So the captain trailed behind as I walked through the outer gates into the teeming midafternoon business of Montevial. Everything blurred together: smells of horses and new-baked bread, rushing figures of tradesmen, liveried messengers, and matrons in fluttering cap-ribbons, the clattering of cart wheels, and the shouts of drovers trying to clear a way through the muddy, crowded streets. How could the matter of one dark winter make such commonplace activity so utterly alien?
    â€œMove along, wench. Are you struck dumb?”
    Darzid observed from his black horse, unruffled as the constable poked at me with his stick. Once I had considered Darzid my friend, but I had come to believe that he would have watched me burn alongside Karon with this same unemotional curiosity.
    I wobbled against a barrow piled with apples before heading down a sloping lane into the mobbed market of the capital city, vaguely aware of apples bouncing all over the street, a startled horse, and a careening hay wagon. Someone in the street behind me cursed and cracked a whip. But I could no longer bring the angry rider’s name into my throbbing head. Concentrating was so difficult. . . .
    As I walked past booths hung with lengths of fabric, coils of rope, and tin pots strung together, mats covered with raw, staring fish, wagons of fruits and hay, and pens of squawking chickens, thickening clouds devoured the sun. I shivered in the sudden chill. Halfway down a lane of food vendors, a hunchbacked old man doled out soup to anyone with a copper coin and a mug. I felt hollow. Empty. But when the old man held out his ladle to me, I shook my head. “I’ve no money, goodman. Nothing to offer you. Nothing.” And then the world spun and fell out from under me. . . .
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    Scents of damp canvas and mildew intruded on my chaotic dreams. A scratchy blanket was tucked under my chin, and the surface under my back was hard and uneven. As I dragged my eyelids open to murky light, my neck was bent awkwardly, and a warm metal cup, quivering slightly and giving off the scent of warmed wine, was pressed to my lips. A few tart drops made their way to my tongue. A few more dribbled down my chin.
    â€œPoor girl,” said a voice from the dimness, a cracked, leathery voice of uncertain timbre.
    â€œWho could she be, dearie? She don’t have the look of a street wench, for all she’s dressed so plain.” This second speaker was surely an aged man.
    â€œNawp. No street wench. Look at the hands.” Two warm, rough hands chafed my fingers. I was so cold. “It’s a lady’s hands. What’re we to do with her, Jonah?”
    â€œCan’t just leave her, can we? She’s just—” The old man’s words quavered and broke off.
    â€œJust the age would be our Jenny.” So the sighing one was a woman. “Let’s keep her for the night. Don’t look as if she’ll care this is no fine house, nor even that she might not wake up where she went to sleep.”
    â€œAye, then. We’ll be on our way.”
    While I drifted between sleep and waking, the bed on which I lay began to move, rocking and jogging over cobbled streets. The old woman stroked my hair and my hands, and crooned to me gently, while rain plopped softly on the canvas roof.
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    â€œHow did you discover it, my dear?”
    â€œShe was shivering so, and terrible pale. I thought she was fevered. But when she held her tits just so and wept in her sleep for the pain of them, I knew. It’s been less than a day, and she’s lost a river of blood, and I don’t know if it’s been too much or no. If we’d left her in the market, she’d be dead for sure.’Twas a good deed you did, old man.”
    â€œAh. This adds a worry though. Fine ladies don’t dress in working garb and take a stroll through the market after they’ve dropped a babe, live or dead.