Suck Seed (2011) English Part 1/2

"Why, sir, no one is around to hear me save you, and would folk not think you deranged were you to claim a child had boasted of such matters to you?"

"In truth, your childish form is a deep disguise," the traveler conceded. "But tell me: do you speak to me merely to solicit new custom, or because that disguise grows oppressively efficient?"

The person scowled. "Why, I must confess that from time to time the very secrecy which benefits my calling does gall my self-esteem. I gain my living in a unique manner, but no one knows I'm the ultimate expert at my trade save those whom I have served, who dare not admit that they know it. Would that I might be famed far and wide as the past-master of my profession!"

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler, and struck his staff against the nearest tomb. That very evening rumors took their rise in Barbizon, and everyone who had lost a relative in suspicious circumstances, to

a poison subtle than the enchanters could detect, or a silent noose, or a knife hissing out of a shadow, nodded their heads and remarked how marvelously well the appearance of a child of tender years might mask a killer.

The traveler passed the body next morning, sprawled on a dung-heap by the road to Teq.

Will it be now? The question haunted the traveler as he went. With half his being he was apprehensive, for all he had ever known throughout innumerable eons was the task allotted him; with the balance, he yearned for it. Karth was gone, Yorbeth gone, Jordan gone-would there shortly also be an end for Tuprid, and Canchalagua, for Quarrel and Dry and Lauri van of the Yellow Eyes?

On impulse, when he came to the grove of ash-trees at Agrimony which was one of the places where such things were possible, he constrained Wolpe to enter the customary candle, but when he tried to smoke a piece of glass over its flame and read the three truths therefrom, the glass cracked. With resignation, he concluded that this was not for him to learn, and went his way.

In Kanish-July the wall that had once divided Banished from Kulyamen, decked along its top with skulls, had crumbled until it was barely more than a bank enshrouded with ivy and convolvulus, and roads pierced it along which went the gay carts of pedlars and the tall horses of adventure-seeking knights. Yet in the minds of certain men it was as though the old barrier still stood.

"Not only," groused a certain Kanish merchant to the traveler, "does my eldest daughter decline to accept her proper fate, and be sacrificed in traditional manner to Fegrim! She adds insult in injury, and proposes to wed a Kulyan brave!"

The traveler, who knew much about the elemental Fegrim, including his indifference to sacrifices, held his peace.

"This I pledge on my life!" the merchant fumed. "If my daughter carries on the way she's going, I shall never want to speak to her again-nor shall I let her in my house!"

"As you wish, so be it," said the traveler. From that moment forward the merchant uttered never a word; dumb, he stood by to watch the fine procession in which the girl went to claim her bridegroom, and before she returned home apoplexy killed him, so that the house was no longer his.

But nothing in this was remarkable. Greed, hate, jealousy-these were commonplace, and it was not to be questioned that they should defeat themselves.

Onward again, therefore, and now at last to Erminvale.