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The Lightning Tree

Page 9

by Patrick Rothfuss


  he was making some advances on young

  Jenna,” Graham said.

  “There’s truth to that,” Old Cob said

  softly. “I saw it.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at

  him, surprised. They’d known Cob all

  their lives and had heard all his stories.

  Even the most boring of them had been

  trotted out three or four times over the

  long years. The thought that he might

  have held something back was … well

  … it was almost unthinkable.

  “He was getting all handsy with young

  Jenna,” Cob said, not looking up from his

  beer. “And she was younger still back

  then, mind you.” He paused for a

  moment, then sighed. “But I was still old,

  and … well … I knew that tinker would

  give me a hiding if I tried to stop him. I

  could see that plain enough on his face.”

  The old man sighed. “I ain’t proud of

  that.”

  Cob looked up with a vicious little

  grin. “Then Martin came round the

  corner,” he said. “This was off behind

  the old Cooper’s place, remember? And

  Martin looked at the fellow, and at Jenna,

  who wasn’t crying or nothing, but she

  obviously wasn’t happy either. And the

  tinker has hold of her wrist …”

  Cob shook his head. “When he hit him.

  It was like a hammer hitting a ham.

  Knocked him right out into the street. Ten

  feet, give or take. Then Martin eyed

  Jenna, who was crying just a bit then.

  More surprised than anything. And

  Martin stuck the boot in him. Just once.

  Not as hard as he could, either. I could

  tell he was just settling up accounts in his

  head. Like he was a moneylender

  shimming up one side of his scale.”

  “That fellow wasn’t any kind of proper

  tinker,” Jake said. “I remember him.”

  “And I heard things about that priest,”

  Graham added.

  A few of the others nodded wordlessly.

  “What if Jessom comes back?” the

  smith’s prentice asked. “I heard some

  folk get drunk and take the coin, then turn

  all cowardly and jump the rail when they

  sober up.”

  Everyone seemed to consider that. It

  wasn’t a hard thought for any of them. A

  band of the king’s guard had come

  through town only last month and posted

  a notice, announcing a reward for

  deserters.

  “Tehlu anyway,” Shep said grimly into

  his nearly empty mug. “Wouldn’t that be

  a great royal pisser of a mess?”

  “Jessom’s not coming back,” Bast said

  dismissively. His voice had such a note

  of certainty that everyone turned to eye

  him curiously.

  Bast tore off a piece of bread and put it

  in his mouth before he realized he was

  the center of attention. He swallowed

  awkwardly and made a broad gesture

  with both hands. “What?” he asked them,

  laughing. “Would you come back,

  knowing Martin was waiting?”

  There was a chorus of negative grunts

  and shaken heads.

  “You have to be a special kind of

  stupid to wreck up Martin’s still,” Old

  Cob said.

  “Maybe eight years will be enough for

  Martin to cool down a bit,” Shep said.

  “Not likely,” Jake said.

  Later, after the customers were gone,

  Bast and the innkeeper sat down in the

  kitchen, making their own dinner from the

  remainder of the stew and half a loaf of

  bread.

  “So what did you learn today, Bast?”

  the innkeeper asked.

  Bast grinned widely. “Today, Reshi, I

  found out where Emberlee takes her

  bath!”

  The innkeeper cocked his head

  thoughtfully. “Emberlee? The Alards’

  daughter?”

  “Emberlee Ashton!” Bast threw his

  arms up into the air and made an

  exasperated noise. “She’s only the third

  prettiest girl in twenty miles, Reshi!”

  “Ah,” the innkeeper said, an honest

  smile flickering across his face for the

  first time that day. “You’ll have to point

  her out to me.”

  Bast grinned. “I’ll take you there

  tomorrow,” he said eagerly. “I don’t

  know if she takes a bath every day, but

  it’s worth the gamble. She’s sweet as

  cream and broad of beam.” His smile

  grew to wicked proportions. “She’s a

  milkmaid, Reshi,” he said the last with

  heavy emphasis. “A milkmaid. ”

  The innkeeper shook his head, even as

  his own smile spread helplessly across

  his face. Finally he broke into a chuckle

  and held up his hand. “You can point her

  out to me sometime when she has her

  clothes on,” he said pointedly. “That will

  do nicely.”

  Bast gave a disapproving sigh. “It

  would do you a world of good to get out

  a bit, Reshi.”

  The

  innkeeper

  shrugged.

  “It’s

  possible,” he said as he poked idly at his

  stew.

  They ate in silence for a long while.

  Bast tried to think of something to say.

  “I did get the carrots, Reshi,” Bast said

  as he finished his stew and ladled the

  rest of it out of the kettle.

  “Better late than never, I suppose,” the

  innkeeper said his voice was listless and

  grey. “We’ll use them tomorrow.”

  Bast shifted in his seat, embarrassed.

  “I’m afraid I lost them afterwards,” he

  said sheepishly.

  This wrung another tired smile from the

  innkeeper. “Don’t worry yourself over it,

  Bast.” His eyes narrowed then, focusing

  on hand that held Bast’s spoon. “What

  happened to your hand?”

  Bast looked down at the knuckles of his

  right hand, they weren’t bloody anymore,

  but they were skinned rather badly.

  “I fell out of a tree,” Bast said. Not

  lying, but not answering the question,

  either. It was better not to lie outright.

  Even weary and dull, his master was not

  an easy man to fool.

  “You should be more careful, Bast,” the

  innkeeper said, prodding listlessly at his

  food. “And with as little as there is to do

  around here, it would be nice if you spent

  a little more time on your studies.”

  “I learned loads of things today,

  Reshi,” Bast protested.

  The innkeeper sat up, looking more

  attentive. “Really?” he said. “Impress me

  then.”

  Bast thought for a moment. “Nettie

  Williams found a wild hive of bees

  today,” he said. “And she managed to

  catch the queen …”

  George R. R. Martin

  Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy

  Award-winner

>   George

  R.

  R.

  Martin, New York Times bestselling

  author of the landmark A Song of

  Ice and Fire fantasy series, has

  been

  called

  “the

  American

  Tolkien.”

  Born in Bayonne, New

  Jersey, George R. R. Martin

  made his first sale in 1971,

  and soon established himself

  as one of the most popular

  SF writers of the seventies.

  He quickly became a

  mainstay of the Ben Bova

  Analog with stories such as

  “With Morning Comes

  Mistfall,” “And Seven Times

  Never Kill Man,” “The

  Second Kind of Loneliness,”

  “The Storms of Windhaven”

  (in collaboration with Lisa

  Tuttle, and later expanded by

  them into the novel

  Windhaven ), “Override,” and

  others, although he also sold

  to Amazing, Fantastic, Galaxy,

  Orbit, and other markets. One

  of his Analog stories, the

  striking novella “A Song for

  Lya,” won him his first Hugo

  Award, in 1974.

  By the end of the seventies,

  he had reached the height of

  his influence as a science-

  fiction writer and was

  producing his best work in

  that category with stories

  such as the famous

  “Sandkings,” his best-known

  story, which won both the

  Nebula and the Hugo in

  1980 (he’d later win another

  Nebula in 1985 for his story

  “Portraits of His Children”),

  “The Way of Cross and

  Dragon,” which won a Hugo

  Award in the same year

  (making Martin the first

  author ever to receive two

  Hugo Awards for fiction in

  the same year,

  “Bitterblooms,” “The Stone

  City,” “Starlady,” and

  others. These stories would

  be collected in Sandkings, one

  of the strongest collections of

  the period. By now, he had

  mostly moved away from

  Analog although he would

  have a long sequence of

  stories about the droll

  interstellar adventures of

  Havalend Tuf (later collected

  in Tuf Voyaging ) running

  throughout the eighties in the

  Stanley Schmidt Analog, as

  well as a few strong

  individual pieces such as the

  novella “Nightflyers”—most

  of his major work of the late

  seventies and early eighties,

  though, would appear in

  Omni . The late seventies and

  the eighties also saw the

  publication of his memorable

  novel Dying of the Light , his

  only solo SF novel, while his

  stories were collected in A

  Song for Lya, Sandkings, Songs of

  Stars and Shadows, Songs the

  Dead Men Sing, Nightflyers, and

  Portraits of His Children. By the

  beginning of the eighties,

  he’d moved away from SF

  and into the horror genre,

  publishing the big horror

  novel Fevre Dream, and

  winning the Bram Stoker

  Award for his horror story

  “The Pear-Shaped Man”

  and the World Fantasy

  Award for his werewolf

  novella “The Skin Trade.”

  By the end of that decade,

  though, the crash of the

  horror market and the

  commercial failure of his

  ambitious horror novel

  Armageddon Rag had driven

  him out of the print world

  and to a successful career in

  television instead, where for

  more than a decade he

  worked as story editor or

  producer on such shows as

  new Twilight Zone and Beauty

  and the Beast.

  After years away, Martin

  made a triumphant return to

  the print world in 1996 with

  the publication in 1996 of

  the immensely successful

  fantasy novel A Game of

  Thrones, the start of his Song

  of Ice and Fire sequence. A

  freestanding novella taken

  from that work, “Blood of

  the Dragon,” won Martin

  another Hugo Award in

  1997. Further books in the

  Song of Ice and Fire series

  — A Clash of Kings, A Storm of

  Swords, A Feast for Crows, and

  A Dance with Dragons— have

  made it one of the most

  popular, acclaimed, and

  bestselling series in all of

  modern fantasy. Recently, the

  books were made into an

  HBO TV series, Game of

  Thrones, which has become

  one of the most popular and

  acclaimed shows on

  television, and made Martin

  a recognizable figure well

  outside of the usual genre

  boundaries, even inspiring a

  satirical version of him on

  Saturday Night Live . Martin’s

  most recent books are the

  latest book in the Ice and

  Fire series, A Dance With

  Dragons, a massive two-

  volume retrospective

  collection spanning the

  entire spectrum of his career,

  Dreamsongs, a novella

  collection, Starlady and Fast-

  Friend, a novel written in

  collaboration with Gardner

  Dozois and Daniel Abraham,

  Hunter’s Run, and, as editor,

  several anthologies edited in

  collaboration with Gardner

  Dozois, including Warriors,

  Songs of the Dying Earth, Songs of

  Love and Death, Down These

  Strange Streets, and Dangerous

  Women, as well as several new

  volumes in his long-running

  Wild Cards anthology series,

  Wild Cards: Busted Flush and

  Wild Cards: Inside Straight. In

  2012, Martin was given the

  Life Achievement Award by

  the World Fantasy

  Convention. A World of Ice and

  Fire , a comprehensive history

  of Westeros and the lands

  beyond, will be released in

  fall of 2014.

  Here he takes us to the

  turbulent land of Westeros,

  home to his Ice and Fire

  series, for the story of that

  swashbuckling rogue

  Daemon Targaryen, the

  Prince who never became a

  King—although his ambition

  to become one would plunge

  the entire world into war.

  Document Outline

  The Lightning Tree Morning: The Narrow Road

  Afternoon: Birds and Bees

  Evening: Lessons

 

 

 
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