Now, I don’t know how they do it elsewhere, but around here that’s mighty young. “She was thirteen when you got her pregnant,” the boy said. “She’s sick, and I need money to bring a doctor to Faires.”Ĭromdor laughed. “She gave you a green stone, in gold filigree.”Ĭromdor blew out one lock of his long black hair. Funny how someone could look furious and terrified at the same time. The boy muttered something incomprehensible. You were passing through with a war party to fight the Amars in the Pirren mountains.” Buxom, raven-haired, and she had an appetite! Mark me, those peasant girls know more tricks than fancy courtesans . . . A black-haired girl,” the boy said, and I could just hear Cromdor describing her. He took the things off his face and breathed on them, then started rubbing them carefully. Make your useless ass useful.” Cromdor slammed the table. “You were one of them mages, weren’t you?” “My daughter kicked me out this morning,” I said, “and told me not to come back till tonight, ’less I was planning to help with the roof.” Just saying it made my back ache. Greta smacked me on the shoulder with a wet rag. Either all those wenches were lies, or the man had more bastards than a king. Before the Gods, we’d all wondered about his kids. Cromdor was staring into his ale, looking about like someone’d hit his ass with the hammer of Gar. “Ah, Carn damn me,” Cromdor said, slamming his ale down. “What sort of man are you, with that skin and those things on your face?” “I don’t reckon time by Church boy-buggers.” He grabbed the pitcher from Greta and took a deep drink. “Do you remember Dary? Peasant girl, in southern Galia? During the border wars, in High Preston Hollense’s time.” “I’m not here for stories,” the boy said. “Get your own damn drink,” Greta said, as usual. “Greta! Fill me up and this boy, too, so he can hear the rest of the story.” Round pieces of glass like he’d cut the bottoms out of two lord’s cups.Ĭromdor took a drink-least he meant to, but his glass was empty. He had about the craziest thing on his face I’ve ever seen someone wear. Boy was also dressed up thick as three bears, festooned in way too many damn furs for summer. I would have suspected this boy to be Amaric, like one of them women Cromdor talks about, but Cromdor always said they’re born with that skin, rich as cream in coffee, whatever in the name of Friya’s dugs coffee is (none of us had a right idea what ivory looked like either) but he was tall as any northerner. Like the parchment Cromdor passed around once in a while, full of some kind of writing we couldn’t read, Cromdor included, that told about his deeds. “And do you know in Coria they use those sorcerer’s tattoos? A man gets in well with a Corian girl, he’d better check the spells where he’s putting his-” “She had that same hair in one other place,” Cromdor said, and everyone chuckled. Never a freckle.” Greta didn’t miss a step. Now you’ve got to describe her.”Ĭromdor’s enormous, broken-toothed grin was like some mean old cat’s. “She was a wench, let me tell you.” Cromdor liked to stretch out “wench,” a grumbling roll like rocks coming down a mountain. Don’t the weather matter? The crop? How’s one god gonna keep track of all that? A fine summer night, and we’d have sunlight until midnight, and stories to go with it, but the young ones were mostly down at the church, praying for the holy warriors on their mission in Ursalim, worshipping the new Bleeding God. Damned if Greta, his daughter, didn’t ever try to stop his goats from getting in, or doing their business in the corners. ’Course, “packed house” is relative-last winter a mudslide tore away half the common room, and Yargin had been rebuilding when he fell through the thatch and died on that floor. As he had for the last ten days and ten before that, Cromdor had a packed house. Series: The Tales of Gorlen VizenfirtheĬromdor the Calderian, thrice-cursed, thrice-condemned, (I’ve forgotten the rest, but believe you me, there is thrice-more) had nearly finished his tale when the traveler slipped in.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.
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