Ursus of Ultima Thule Read Online Free PDF Page B

a mat. He stopped still.
    “I thought you might remember,” a voice said. “I thought it might please you.”
    “Dame, I do remember,” the old nain said. “And I am pleased.”
    Without bending down, he touched the flowers with his fingers. The blooms were scentless, but the room contained the scent of some that had never blossomed in the northern land of Thule. He had heard of the tiny horns and small flasks carven in strange designs upon strange stone, which contained the odorous essences of plants for which Thule had no name, delivered at intervals in trading vessels for great price and for the anointing and the pleasure of the Orfas Queen. He turned.
    “Your face told me that you had never seen them before and that they pleased you; so I gave them to you, the three of them, and presently you gave me these — ” She took from her broad bejeweled belt the ivory case containing the three small things so carefully wrought: dirk and spoon and comb. “Only see,” she said, sorrowfully. The red-rotted metal crumbled at her slight finger touch. “Can you not effect a cure?”
    His broad stern face relaxed into something much like sorrow, he held both his hands straight up at the wrists. “They are so small,” he said, musing. “All the witchery of iron known to the nains might just suffice to mend them. But the Orfas King would not believe that. If these could be cured, he would expect, he would demand, he would require, that all the rotting iron in his realm be cured. And this cannot be done. I do not say it can never be done. But it cannot be done now. I do not know when. Perhaps never again in our lives — Dame — perhaps never in our lives — ”
    A moment’s silence. “I shall leave them at the forge,” she said. Again a moment’s silence. Her beauty seemed no less than it had been that long ago when Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur had been a wandernain and she the lady of the Orfas Chief. He not yet king. She not yet queen. Sundry sayings floated in his mind.
One queen is every queen, every queen is all queens
. A beautiful woman, no doubt, and without question well versed in witchery, though he knew as little of queencraft as she of naincraft. She spoke again and said, “What have you to tell me of one who waits to return from across the all-circling sea?” He looked at her with pure unknowing and the certainty ebbed from her face. Then she said, “One who is not to be named, one who is the son of the half-brother — ”
    Understanding seemed to come not so much from his mind as from his broad and grizzled chest, whence a sigh of comprehension welled. “Ahhh. That one, who contested with — Nay, Dame, I haven’t seen that one for four handfuls of seasons. Eh, must be full four. Nor heard of that one in that time. Say you that he has passed the all-circling seas?”
    She gazed at him, a line between her brows. “Say you not? I see you seem full ignorant of what I had thought every nain, as every man, has heard: that one fled to the barbar-lands after fleeing court — when my Orfas gained the kingship — and has conspired to curse the iron so that, when he returns with hordes of barbar-folk, the kingsmen shall be as though unarmed. And say you that you know this not?”
    He stretched forth both his long, long arms and held up both his thick and calloused palms — straight up — and he looked at her with pure unknowing.
    • • •
    Long he sat there alone, musing on what she had said, striving to make sense of it. Long he sat there, reflecting on old conflicts long forgotten — though clearly not forgotten by the Orfas King. Long he sat there, yearning for the red fires and the hot forges and the lust and joy of beating out the good red iron. Old forge songs and sayings came to him and old sayings not of the forge at all, such as
By what three things is a king made? By strength, by magic, and by fortune
.
    Having set in the outercourt a watch of mandrakes who would shriek beshrew if so much as