The Jongurian Mission Read Online Free PDF Page A

growing up on a small farm on the edge of Adjuria hadn’t? When Bryn thought about it, however, it simply came down to the fact that he didn’t think he was cut out for the courtly and governmental duties that his Uncle Halam performed. All he’d known his whole life was taking care of animals, plowing fields, and harvesting grain. What use was there for the ability to haul stones, mend fences, and milk cows in the capital?
    Bryn saw his Uncle Halam emerge from the house and walk over to the garden, stare down at the vegetables, then walk over to the barn where he leaned up against its stone wall.
    “ Uncle Halam,” Bryn called out, waving his arm in the air.
    Halam looked in the general direction of the shout, but with dark coming on fast he could n’ make out where Bryn was.
    “ Over here, Uncle Halam, straight ahead,” Bryn shouted.
    Halam squinted as he began walking in Bryn’s direction. Finally, a few paces from him, he spotted Bryn and went to join him.
    “ Well, my boy, what’re you thinking of the talk you heard between me and my brother just now?” Halam asked as he pulled a worn wooden pipe from his travel-stained coat along with a pouch of tobacco leaves which he began to push into the pipe’s bowl.
    “ I really don’t know, Uncle Halam,” Bryn began, “it just seems like so much all of a sudden. I mean, I’ve never even been to Plowdon, and to now have the chance to go to Baden, well, it just seems so…”
    “Overwhelming?” Halam finished for him.
    Bryn smiled. “Yes, overwhelming.”
    Halam pulled some matches from his coat, lit one on the side of the rock, then lowered it down to the bowl of the pipe. The tobacco caught fire and glowed orange and red as Halam sucked in the smoke, letting it out quickly until he was satisfied he had the pipe going strong before tossing the match at his feet.
    “ It’s a bit much for a man of any age who’s never seen the capital of Adjuria, no matter where he’s coming from. I remember the first time I laid eyes on her wide, bustling streets. I was awed and intimidated. All I wanted to do was run to the nearest alley and hide behind a heap of trash, hoping it would all go away. But I threw my shoulders back and held my head high, and walked those streets.” Halam smiled at the recollection, and Bryn could see him looking back into the past, seeing those streets as only a man who has walked them before can see them.
    “ It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t too difficult either. After a time I got used to it, as much as a man from Tillatia can, mind you.” Halam looked down at Bryn, tousling his hair. “She’s the largest city in the land, Bryn, but we’ve plenty of smaller cities that you can see on the way that will prepare you for her immensity.”
    “ Which ones,” Bryn asked, his curiosity overcoming his trepidation at the thought of traveling through these wide swaths of civilization.
    “ Well, we’d start right here in Tillatia with Plowdon, a sizeable city in itself. From there we’d head down the King’s Road, and pass through Coria on the Tillatia-Culdovian border. From there we’d travel to Lindonis on the eastern edge of the Montino Mountains and just north of the King’s Wood. After that we’d be but a days ride from the capital itself.”
    “ The King’s Wood and the Montino Mountains!” Bryn said with excitement. “I’ve read about them so many times, and even seen some drawings in Eston, but to actually walk along them, well, that would be something.”
    “ Aye, lad,” Halam agree. “See, it’s nothing to be afraid of, now. What’s to be scaring you is the prospect of staying on this farm for the rest of your life, and not taking the opportunity to see the land your hard labor’s done so much to support. A man’s got to see the land he lives in, as I’ve been trying to tell my brother for the past hour.” Halam signed and tapped out the bowl of his pipe against the rock. “That’s an easy thing to be forgetting