The Coming Of Wisdom Read Free Page A

advanced beyond that rank.
    “How can you tell how far you were brought?” Quili asked.
    “Shonsu could tell. He knows everything! And we didn’t come all in one jump. He woke at the first one—I think he must sleep with both eyes open.” Whoever Shonsu was, Adept Nnanji seemed to regard him with more respect than he did the Goddess. “I woke at the third—the cold woke me.” The swordsman shivered. “We came from the tropics, you see.”
    “What are tropics, adept?”
    “I’m not sure,” he confessed. “Hot lands. Shonsu can explain. But the Dream God is very high and thin there. He got wider as we jumped north. And lower. You can see seven separate bands here, right? When we started, he was fainter and most of the arcs too close together to separate. And we moved east, too, Shonsu says. The rain only came with the last jump.”
    Shonsu must be a priest, she decided. He certainly did not sound like any swordsman she had ever heard of.
    “How could he possibly know about going east?”
    “The stars—and the eye of the Dream God! It happened about midnight, and dawn kept coming closer and closer. You’ll have to ask Shonsu. He says it’s still the middle of the night in Hann.”
    Hann! “You’ve been to
Hann
, adept?”
    He glanced down at her, surprised at her reaction. She could see well enough now to tell that his face was filthy, smeared with dirt and grease. “Well, not Hann itself. We were trying to cross to Hann, from the holy island.”
    “The temple!” she exclaimed. “You were visiting the great temple, then?”
    Adept Nnanji snorted. “Visiting it? I was born in it.”
    “No!”
    “Yes!” He grinned hugely, big white teeth gleaming. “My mother was near her term. She went to pray for an easy labor, and—
whoosh
! There I was. They only just had time to get her into a back room. The priests thought it might almost rank as a miracle.”
    He was teasing her. Then the grin grew even wider. “My father had put six coppers in the bowl, and if he’d made it seven, he says, then I’d have been born right there, in front of the Goddess Herself.”
    That was pure blasphemy, but his grin was irresistible. Quili laughed in spite of herself. “You should not joke about miracles, adept.”
    “Perhaps.” He paused and then spoke more humbly. “I’ve seen a lot of miracles in the last two weeks, Apprentice Quili. Ever since Shonsu arrived.”
    “He’s your mentor?”
    “Well, not just at the moment. He released me from my oaths before the battle . . . but he says I may swear to him again.”
    Battle?
    “Watch this puddle!” Nnanji let go her hand and put his arm around her, guiding her by a muddy patch. But he kept his arm there when they were past, and the light was quite good now. She began to feel alarmed. She was glad of the protection of her cloak. She had rarely spoken to a Fourth before and certainly never been hugged by one. He was smiling down at her, being very friendly. Very.
    There were few free men close to her age on the estate, only two unmarried. They all treated her with awed respect, because of her craft, and they had nothing to talk about anyway, except the crops and the herds. She had forgotten what real conversation was like. But she had never had a real conversation with a man, only with other girls, her friends in the temple, years ago. He was speaking to her as an equal. That was flattery, and she was worried by how good it felt.
    Why would the Goddess send such a filthy swordsman? It was not only his face. Now they had reached the bottom of the gully. Ahead of them lay the River, stretching away to the eastern horizon, brilliant below the cloud. Color was returning to the World, The sun god would appear in a few moments. Rain was still falling, but gently, and she could see water streaking the dirt on the swordsman’s bony shoulders and chest. Even his kilt . . . 
    Quili gasped. “That’s blood! You’ve been hurt?”
    “Not mine!” He grinned again,