Ursus of Ultima Thule Read Online Free PDF

“I will give you an advice — ” The king sat up. “Sea-cow’s skin is tougher by far and far less risky to hunt.”
    The king growled and moved on his bench. Then he came forward and, stooping, loosed the High Smith’s bounds. “It is well,” the old nain said aloud. In his mind he said that in the brighter light Orfas looked his full age indeed. Gray streaked the once yellow hair, now scanted. The smoothskin was no longer quite so smooth of skin at all: here wrinkled, there slack, elsewhere puffed with fat where not hollowed. It was nonetheless well, this act. Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur sat and the king sat before him. Would he eat? — Would he drink? the king asked. The nain grunted, held his hand up. No. A silence fell.
    “Listen,” said the king at last. “What will you nains do when the barbar-folk invade?”
    “I do not know that they will invade. I do not believe that they will invade. Why do you think so?”
    The king restrained himself. Beneath his shag eyebrows his eyes looked at the nain like the waters of a wintry sea. “Why should they not invade? Are we now known to them as the source of great wealth? Amber and ivory and peltry — do they not value these things? Is there not a proverb,
When the prey stumbles, the hunter sharpens his knife
? They will invade to gain our wealth; they will invade because without iron, good iron for weapons, we are weak before them; they will invade because I tell you they intend to invade and it is in order to strengthen themselves by weakening us that they have cursed our iron — ”
    The old nain wheezed in the way that nains have and he said, “So now it is the barbar-folk who have cursed iron. And not the nains.”
    Slant-glanced, Orfas looked at him. “All the witchery of iron is yours and you have kept it yours and we have suffered you to keep it yours. Besides the one kept by treaty at my court, there has been no forge outside of Nainland. If any man had a broken spear or plowpoint, he had to wait in hopes of a wandernain coming by with unbroken spear or plowpoint to trade him old for new plus a goodly gift. Nay, High Smith. I never begrudged the nainfee, myself paying highest of all. If this is at the bottom of all, let it be said the nainfee will be raised, let it be doubled, tripled — ”
    “It is not we.”
    The king’s teeth clenched upon a strand of beard he had thrust into his mouth. “What has ever happened to iron without the nains causing it to happen?”
    “This is a new thing, King. Had we not asked you long before you asked we?”
    The king’s hand made a movement, the king’s face made a movement. The king was not in an instant persuaded. “You asked in order to cover yourself. But you have not covered yourself. Do you not know that
the king’s ears are the longest ears in Thule?
I hear all things and I can, from what I hear, reckon all things. Thus it is that I know that iron is accursed, that the nainfolk have cursed it — at whose behest and for what purpose? Your silence is useless. Speak, then.”
    The old nain sighed.
    “If you hear all things, then already you have heard of what the nains say among the nains in Nainland, namely that it is doubtless a device of the neglected wizards of Wizardland in order to ensure that they do not remain neglected: this curse, the death of iron. And if from what you hear you can reckon all things, then you can reckon what needs be done.”
    Now it was the king who sighed.
    “You speak to me as though we were two old women pounding bark. You will speak differently if I come upon Nainland with all my men.”
    The old High Smith shook his massive head, “It is all one, if you come upon Nainland with all your men or with but one or none of your men. The forges of Nainland are cold, Orfas. The forges of Nainland are cold.”
    • • •
    As he stepped from the outer to the inner of the two rooms in which he was to be lodged — or confined — he saw three great white flowers lying together upon