Spice & Wolf III Read Online Free PDF Page A

head. “I haven’t heard of that place. Is there anything else?”
    “Er...there were many towns, but they didn’t all have names the way towns do now. One could just point and say a town was beyond that mountain, and that was enough. We didn’t need names.”
    It was true; Lawrence had been surprised by this the first time he visited the north. He had arrived at a certain town and found that its name was used only by travelers. Neither its residents nor the people living nearby knew or cared about the town’s name.
    There were elderly people who claimed that naming a town would bring it to the attention of evil spirits.
    Undoubtedly what they really meant by “evil spirits” was the Church.
    “Well, we’ll start at Nyohhira, then. I know where that is.”
    “That name brings back such memories. Are the hot springs still there?”
    “I’ve heard that nobles and bishops secretly visit the town for its hot springs, despite the fact that it’s in pagan lands. According to rumor, it’s even exempt from Church attacks because of those same hot springs.”
    “Those springs don’t belong to any one group, after all,” said
    Holo before coughing slightly. “If Nyohhira’s our goal, then from Nyohhira it is that way.”
    Holo pointed southwest—not north to Lawrence’s relief.
    Any farther north than Nyohhira meant lands where the snow never melted, even in the summer.
    Yet even knowing that Yoitsu was southwest of Nyohhira left too wide a region.
    “How long did it take to get from Nyohhira to Yoitsu?”
    “For me, two days. For a human...I do not know.”
    Lawrence thought back to the time he had ridden on Holo’s back when she was in wolf form, near Ruvinheigen. She would have no trouble traversing unimproved roads.
    That left too much area to search, even starting from Nyohhira. Searching for a town that itself might only be a tiny village would be like looking for a needle in a desert. It was precisely because Lawrence himself was a traveling merchant, who was used to walking from town to town, that he understood the difficulty involved.
    There was also still the fact that Lawrence had heard Yoitsu had been destroyed by a great bear spirit.
    If that was true, finding the remains of a town that had been destroyed centuries earlier would be truly impossible.
    Lawrence was not a nobleman with the luxury of passing his days in idleness. He could only stray from his original trade route lor six months at the outside. His mistake in Ruvinheigen had set him still further back from his goal of opening a shop, and he did not have anything like a surplus of free time.
    He was thinking all this over when something finally occurred to him.
    “Could you not find it yourself from Nyohhira? You know the general direction, right?”
    If it was just two days from Nyohhira, then just as Holo said, she would most likely be able to remember the details as she got closer.
    The words had simply fallen from his mouth without any particular ill intent, but no sooner had Lawrence spoken than he realized his mistake.
    Holo looked at him, stunned.
    Surprise also registered on Lawrence’s face as Holo looked away.
    “Y-yes...if I got as far as Nyohhira, I could certainly find my way to Yoitsu.”
    Holo forced a smile. Lawrence wondered what was wrong, then voiced a sudden “Ah—” as the realization dawned.
    In the port town of Pazzio, Holo had said that loneliness was a deathly illness.
    Holo feared loneliness above all else. Even if he didn’t mean anything by it, she was likely to take his suggestion hard, and she had been drinking.
    She probably took his suggestion to mean that he had grown weary of searching for her homeland.
    “Hey, now, wait just a minute. Don’t take it the wrong way. There’s no reason I couldn’t wait in Nyohhira while you searched for a couple of days.”
    “Yes. That would be enough. You’ll guide me as far as Nyohhira, won’t you? I had hoped to see a few more towns.”
    The conversation