The Throne of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

it’s an extraordinary likeness, although the color is wrong. They’re gray, you know.” While I again debated whether he was making fun of me, he said, “Some day we must have a serious talk about your future. Your talent is perhaps greater than I supposed. I had thought of taking on an apprentice....”
    “An apprentice botanist?”
    “Yes.” He laughed. “Something like that.”
    I gave him the ghoul, but then he insisted on buying the other pieces for a sum that staggered me. It so staggered me that I failed to notice that no money changed hands. Instead of real silver from the market, I was left with promised gold from my host. But how could I press him for payment while I accepted his free room and board?
    These thoughts crushed me only later, and I was still grinning as he said, “I would highly recommend the water from the Bower to your wife. Strength, grace, stature and long life are the least of the gifts it imparts.”
    I blurted, “I hate that place!”
    “I thought you might, and so I must warn you to stay away from it. Trees are sensitive, too, you know, and I wouldn’t want my darlings upset by your hostility.” I blushed with guilt for the test I had made with my knife. I think he knew about it. “But I’m sure they would welcome your charming wife. Women are different.” He pinched my arm playfully before scurrying off with the work that had cost me a sleepless night and the strength of my hands.
    * * * *
    Dendra scoffed at my suspicion that our host had taken my work to keep us from leaving. She scorned my suggestion that he meant us no good.
    “You’re just not used to dealing with the upper classes,” she said with an infuriating sniff.
    “Polliel spare me from the upper classes, and may Sleithreethra tear out their ribs for needles to knit their shrouds!”
    This group included her and all her relatives, and she lectured at length on the proper handling of bumptious churls. I stamped about and grumbled, then attacked my work with a vengeance. My mood soured further when I realized that I was acting just like my father, who would chop trees with especial vigor after quarreling with my mother. I took a perverse pleasure in the pain I inflicted on my cramped hands.
    I freed a botched creature like a cross between a man and a shark. Dendra criticized it with slapdash painting, and we both laughed at the absurd result. We ended by embracing tenderly, but I knew that our argument had only been put aside. I had to convince her that this place was unhealthy. Perhaps it was only the light diffused through the plants crowding our windows, but I thought her skin was taking on a greenish tinge.
    I worked through the night again. Before dawn I gathered those pieces that Dendra had already painted into a bag and lowered it over the wall into Amorartis Street, where I doubted that any sane footpad would lurk. If our patron again relieved me of my creations on my way to the gate, I would at least have those figures to sell.
    As I returned home stealthily, a pale form shimmered from the Bower. I froze, imagining things worse than a human intruder. It was nothing but a man, however, whom I failed at first to recognize in his pasty nakedness as Dwelphorn Thooz. His halting gait was bringing him directly towards me, and I withdrew into the shelter of a plant whose red mouths parted slackly as the darkness faded. Perhaps I could have fled unnoticed, but I was curious to see if his body displayed fishy anomalies.
    He looked normal enough, but as he passed close by me I saw that his skin was scored with fresh scratches and welts. A gleam lit his eyes, and a smile flickered on his bruised lips as he muttered a litany of female names. In those days, on the rare occasions when I gave any thought to the topic, the amorous practices of the old amused me; but at that moment my impression that he was stumbling home from an orgy gave me a chill. I stayed in hiding until the sun was fairly risen, desiring a glimpse of