The Three Lands Omnibus Part 70

Temporal men had burned for less. Prosper had considered himself exceedingly merciful for sentencing the boy only to a week's fast. Not until three months ago, though, had Prosper begun to remember a had allowed himself to remember a what place food held in the hunting tribe in which both he and Huard had been raised.

First came mid-morning meals, when the tribal folk travelled sociably from hut to hut, sampling each other's foods. These were followed by mid-afternoon meals, in which the various groups within the tribe a the mothers, the hunters, the soldiers, the children a gathered separately and discussed, at great length, their favorite meals from the past. Next were the early evening snacks, usually taking place immediately after the service, in which children, in particular, exchanged bags of sweets and engaged in long bargaining over whether two sugar b.a.l.l.s equalled one honey cake. And finally, climaxing the day, a three-hour feast between mid-evening and midnight, in which the day's hunting was roasted upon spits, and the delicate dishes that the women had spent most of the day preparing were poured out onto platters for all to admire.

In the midst of the tribe of the Feasters, Huard a inclined by bodily temperament and upbringing to love rich foods and sweets a practiced an austerity that stunned his fellow tribal folk. Every day, he merrily attended the important social events of the day: the mid-morning guesting, the mid-afternoon bonding, the early evening trading, and the late evening feast. He walked amidst wine caskets and sizzling mountain cats and high peaks of sugar b.a.l.l.s, admiring them all and contributing his own anecdotes about which foods tasted best.

He ate almost nothing.

Sweets had not pa.s.sed into his mouth since the day when he reacted to Prosper's stern lecture about the demon of gluttony with tears of repentance. Meat and wine, the staple foods of the tribe, he almost never ate. Beans and vegetables and fruits, which formed the central portion of priests' diet, were not part of the tribe's traditional diet, and Huard had made no suggestion that such foods be added to the tribe. Instead, he existed almost entirely on a small amount of water, a small amount of cheese, and bread imported from the neighboring crop-growing tribe, which was almost always stale and hard by the time it reached the border.

The tribal women a clearly convinced that their portly priest was about to expire from starvation a would periodically leave offerings of meat and wine at Huard's doorstep. Whenever possible, Huard would quietly dispose of these gifts to needy families within the tribe. In cases where such imparting would create hurt feelings, Huard did not spurn the gift but instead invited temporal guests to his home. He would urge these guests to eat helping after helping of the meat and wine, while he himself ate the bare minimum required of a polite host.

After six weeks of watching Huard's dietary habits a which the priest never discussed a Prosper had awakened one morning to the realization that he had been placed under the care of a man who was as gifted in bodily and spiritual discipline as Prosper himself was gifted in tutoring. After that, Prosper had found that his discipline of humility toward the priest was considerably easier.

The smell of roasting deer caused Prosper's stomach to gurgle as he and Huard walked toward the open area where the communal meals were held. Torches stood on poles at the head and foot of each of the trestle tables holding the food, but the torches were barely needed on this moonlit night. Even before he entered the clearing, Prosper could see the piles of pies filled with badger meat, the sticks piercing various types of bird-meat, the trays offering a choice of golden or ruddy wines, and bowls filled with boiled pastries covered with white sugar, a delicacy that Prosper had discovered was the most pleasant aspect of his dietary discipline.

Huard, following his usual custom of ignoring the food until one of the tribal folk dragged him bodily to the serving tables, wandered off to greet some of the hunters and to allow them to describe, in mouth-watering detail, the succulent choices of the night. Prosper carefully wove his way through the tangle of tribal folk sitting on the ground or, in the case of older men and women, on tree stumps. He was trying to still the demon of panic arising within him.

The three-hour feasts had become a time of daily torture for Prosper. Here, as nowhere else, he was forced to accept the truth of what his place was in the tribe. For the moment, he tried to pretend to himself that the other people there were too absorbed in conversation to notice him.

He paused before one of the torches, considering the spectacle before him. It had not taken him many meals here to realize that the demon of gluttony did not trouble him, and that his austere eating habits over the decades had been of no spiritual benefit to him a indeed, had been of benefit to the demons, since his vainglory over his eating habits had increased every time he encountered priests whose bodily temperaments required them to struggle to achieve the discipline that Prosper achieved with ease.

With his indifference to food, Prosper was learning that his real struggle was to concentrate his mind on each day's offerings so that he looked like an ordinary temporal man.

He considered the problem with a focussed spirit, as he would if asked to translate a particularly difficult pa.s.sage. Only the ill took less than five dishes at his tribe's evening feast; the question was how to fill himself slowly with food so that he had enough room left at the end for the sugar b.a.l.l.s and other sweets. He decided finally to begin with the soup: that was usually more broth than meat, and he could dip into it the hard flat-bread that his priestly discipline no longer demanded, but for which he had acquired a peculiar nostalgia.

He picked up one of the glazed bowls and walked over to the simmering cooking pot. The ladle was too hot to touch directly. Pulling a rag from his belt that he kept there for such purposes, he wound the cloth round his hand and began to raise the soup into his bowl.

A jarring blow at his elbow caused him to drop the ladle. He gave an involuntary cry as the burning liquid splashed onto his skin. Turning his head, he saw, without surprise, one of the tribal youths who enjoyed playing this sort of game with him. The youth had his arm wrapped over a friend's shoulder, and both the young men were laughing heartily.

With effort, Prosper turned his thoughts toward fis.h.i.+ng the ladle out of the soup into which it had fallen. For several weeks now, he had suspected the youth and his friend of being twisted, for they spent far too much time with each other and far too little time with the other young men. On one terrible night, Prosper had been tortured by temptations to tell Huard of this serious spiritual matter. By morning, though, he was able to chase away the demon of judgment and see the matter clearly. Huard was far too skilled a priest not to know the signs of twistedness. If the youth and his friend had not been formally cursed, it was either because Huard had placed the youths under discipline or because he believed that the demons would leave of their own accord in due time. Or because, quite possibly, Prosper had read the evidence incorrectly. In any case, the matter was a spiritual one, and Prosper would be placing his own spirit in peril if he allowed himself to dwell on it.

The youths were gone and Prosper's hand was scalded by the time he managed to pull out the ladle. Wiping the ladle carefully clean with his rag, he completed the task of filling his bowl. And then, alas, he was faced with his usual daily nightmare: of figuring out which group to join.

The hunters, Prosper had found, simply ignored his presence. Prosper could comfort himself with the knowledge that hunters behaved like that toward everyone; they considered their work to be inferior only to the work of priests, and perhaps not even that. Prosper remembered this well, for his father had been a hunter. His father's pride had demanded that, if his son were determined to be a priest, he should become one in as honorable a fas.h.i.+on as possible, taking his instruction from the High Priest himself. Still, that had been the end of any communication between Prosper and his hunting family.

With bits of hunting lore still trickling through his memory, Prosper had recently attempted to join the hunters on one of their trails, carrying their extra spears as a boy does. The hunters had made no move to stop him, but neither had they acknowledged his presence, and one flung spear a thrown where Prosper would have been if he had not ducked in time a had made clear to the exiled man that his services were not wanted.

The soldiers had been much the same. Normally the most affable of men, always eager to discuss their trade with outsiders, they had taken to unsheathing and polis.h.i.+ng their blades on the occasions when Prosper stopped by to ask whether he could be of any a.s.sistance in fetching water and doing other small tasks while they practiced their wrestling and swordplay. Prosper, whose training school had been located next to a military yard and who knew what soldiers could do when their tempers were roused, was finding it increasingly difficult to call up the courage to approach that group of men.

The craftsmen were more forthright in their response to his offers of help: Prosper still had a cut on the cheek where a shard of pottery had grazed him. Even the frail and ill of the camp were accustomed to shouting invectives at him when he tried to a.s.sist them through his priestly knowledge of healing.

Prosper's greatest hope had then dwelt with the children, for he did not think it was vainglory to acknowledge that the G.o.d had given him a gift for being able to communicate with the young, especially with the catechism-aged boys whom he had taught for so many years. Children were also less likely to have acquired the deep fear that their elders felt toward the G.o.d-cursed. Having run these thoughts through his mind, Prosper had decided that he would be doing the children's parents a service if he helped to keep the children occupied with tales or other light amus.e.m.e.nts.

A mother screaming in hysteria at the sight of Prosper talking to her young daughter had put an end to this idea. From that moment forward, all of the mothers had kept a careful lookout for him, and children scattered in fear at the sight of him. When Huard began to receive requests from the tribal folk that Prosper be expelled from the territory, Prosper abandoned further attempts to contact the tribal children. It surprised him how much this forced sacrifice cut into him.

Looking over the crowd, he caught sight of Huard, who was cheerfully talking with the chieftain Iolo while dipping his bread into his water to soften it sufficiently to chew. The two men were just a hand's breath away from a badger sizzling over a spit. Prosper felt no desire to join them; Iolo's spear had been the one that had nearly impaled him.

A roar of laughter turned his attention toward a group of young men near the wine caskets. From their gestures, Prosper gathered that his tormenters were spreading the story of the ladle. Prosper sighed, then straightened his spine. Looking at the group, he found it hard to believe that the youths felt shock or fear or dismay as a result of his presence. Nevertheless, it was all too likely that he had harmed at least some of the young men by returning to the tribe. Clearly, his duty lay in visiting the group and seeing whether he could mend matters in any way.

He wove his way round the tribal folk who were seated on the ground. As he approached the young men, the group grew suddenly silent. Several of the youths clutched their spears tighter, and one reached for his dagger. Prosper, feeling the smile beginning to stiffen on his face, asked, "Might I join you?"

There was a pause. The original youth and his friend exchanged some sort of silent message involving raised eyebrows and nods; then the youth silently gestured toward the empty s.p.a.ce beside him.

Prosper's smile grew more genuine. He stepped forward a and immediately fell over the spear shaft that the youth's friend had thrust between his feet.

He managed to fall on his hands and knees rather than his face, but his bowl crashed to the ground underneath him, spattering the stew onto his chest and thighs. A few drops landed on the young man with the dagger, who began to curse Prosper roundly with a lengthy description a pulled from the catechism, which he had apparently memorized well a of what happens to the G.o.d-cursed after death. Shouts of laughter all but engulfed his words.

Prosper closed his eyes, feeling the demon of anger rus.h.i.+ng through his blood. He deserved this, he reminded himself. He deserved much more than this.

During his years as a priest, Prosper had always been reluctant to sentence anyone to exile. He considered such a sentence to be no mercy; everyone knew that more G.o.d-cursed men died in exile than survived. Most were slain during the first few days after their expulsion, when their fresh curse-mark made it clear to all who met them that they had recently entered exile. Even after the curse-mark healed, the exiled man or woman would generally wander from territory to territory, living off of the countryside and never staying in any place long, lest the scar left by the curse-mark be noticed and someone should question too closely when the mark had been incised.

Winter was the worst test for the exile. Every spring, during the thaw, hunters and field-hands happened across the frozen bodies of curse-marked men and women who had not survived the snows. Their unpurified corpses, even more than the burnings, helped to keep the Northern Peninsula's people from straying from the G.o.d's path.

Prosper did not have the skills to live off of the countryside; if it had not been for the mercy of Martin and Huard, he would have died very quickly during his exile. Even the taunting youths, Prosper reminded himself as he rose to his feet amidst the laughter, granted him mercy by permitting him, however grudgingly, to live amidst them during this year.

With this thought in mind, Prosper managed to make a moderately sincere apology to the dagger owner. Though it took a moment's struggle with his anger demon, he even offered an apology to the spear-owner when the youth demanded one. This provoked another shout of laughter. Prosper departed as quickly as possible, clutching the empty stew bowl.

He was forced to make his way back through the rest of the tribe, enduring the glances of amus.e.m.e.nt or scorn at his dripping figure. Pa.s.sing the table, he saw that several bowls of stew lay upon it, but these had ferns placed over their rims, the tribal manner of indicating that the owner had placed the bowl down temporarily and would be returning to reclaim it.

The cooking pot was considerably less full than it had been before. Prosper began to wonder whether he would be able to eat anything at all before the feast ended. Deciding that he needed stronger sustenance than the stew in his refilled bowl, he began to walk toward the wine caskets.

A woman refilling one of the platters with a basket full of sweet-buns blocked his path. She was the woman he had seen earlier at the service, Prosper noted as he came closer, while he mentally counted his heartbeats up to five. He was barely aware that he did so; it was an old discipline, taught to him when he had been a priest-pupil under the High Priest, to prevent him from allowing his idle gaze to linger too long on any woman, lest l.u.s.tful desires arise. None ever had, but the discipline was so ingrained in him by now that not even his new discipline as a temporal man could make him fully aware of the counting.

The woman, alas, noticed his glance at the fourth heartbeat. He was on the point of pa.s.sing behind her, and she jerked around, startled. The basket in her hand fell, causing the sweet-buns to roll to the ground.

Prosper felt joy surge through him. Here, at least, he had a clear excuse to be of a.s.sistance to another living spirit. Quickly placing his bowl aside and covering the rim with a fern, he rushed over to where the woman was trying to gather some sweet-buns that had rolled away.

"Allow me to a.s.sist you," said Prosper, kneeling down beside her.

The woman rose rapidly to her feet and said breathlessly, "Please, there's no need-"

"It is a pleasure," said Prosper, trying to sound as cheerful as Huard as he reached over for a sweet-bun that was nudging the woman's foot. "I'm used to picking objects off the ground; I was quite clumsy as a boy. Once I dropped a purification lamp during the middle of service, and the wors.h.i.+ppers were so frightened that they-"

He stopped. It is difficult to speak when a blade-tip is pressed against your throat.

Prosper was on his haunches, leaning forward; he resisted the impulse to jerk back and cry out to Huard for help. The priest could not help him in this. Though none of the tribal folk had yet dared to displease their priest by killing Prosper, it remained their right under the G.o.d's Law to do so. Feeling very much like an ant that has a boot-heel hovering over it, Prosper raised his eyes.

Above him, standing a foot ahead of the woman, was the honey-skinned soldier whom Prosper faintly remembered seeing on his first day's return to the territory. The man's battle-scarred hand was holding the sword hilt with a looseness that betokened experience. His dark eyes were as cold as the Black River. Prosper, feeling sweat begin to trickle between his throat and the blade, resisted the impulse to swallow.

The dark-eyed soldier said, in a voice as low as distant thunder, "Stay away from my wife, demon-man."

Prosper felt the rumble of his own distant thunder; he quickly closed his eyes. He must not think of his own pain, he remembered as he tried to chase back the demons of anger and fear. He must think of the pain of others. He opened his eyes again. Behind the man, the woman was clutching at her basket; the lines of her face were drawn taut. He had frightened her, Prosper realized. The man had every reason to be angry.

"I apologize for my ill behavior, madam," he said, trying not to move his throat overly much as he spoke. "I ought not to have come upon you so abruptly. I hope that you and your husband will accept my-"

He closed his mouth. Blood trickled down his throat from where the blade had pressed in. The dark-eyed soldier said, in a voice more rumbling than before, "One word more, and you die."

Prosper closed his eyes again and wondered whether his discipline permitted him a prayer to the G.o.d at a juncture like this. He suspected that such a prayer would receive no answer.

Then, with a swiftness akin to that of the G.o.d, Huard appeared at the side of the woman. Ignoring Prosper and the soldier as though they were not there, he said to the woman, "Is it true what I've heard, Charity, that you cooked today's sugar b.a.l.l.s? I cannot tell you how many compliments I have heard on them! Is the secret in the honey, or do you perhaps boil the pastries for a minute longer than is usual-"

The soldier, seemingly unwilling to shed blood in a priest's presence, silently withdrew his blade from Prosper's windpipe and carefully wiped off the small amount of blood at the tip before sheathing his sword. Prosper, who was beginning to shake, waited until the soldier had joined the debate as to whether b.u.mblebee honey or flower-bee honey was best used on sugar b.a.l.l.s; then he arose and shakily returned to the table.

Given the events of the meal so far, he was almost surprised to find the bowl just as he had left it, rather than overturned in the dirt. He put the fern aside and then, feeling that he could not make it as far as the wine without bodily renewal, lifted the bowl to his lips.

His mouth stopped at the rim of the bowl. He had filled the bowl halfway, but now it was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over the rim. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward to sniff the stew.

A short time later he knelt in the wet gra.s.s of the riverbank, watching under moonlight as the urine-soaked stew disappeared into the black waters. Pain was was.h.i.+ng over him in unending waves.

It had been like this every night for three months. He told himself that the torment he was enduring was small in comparison to the destruction he had inflicted upon those under his priestly care for the past forty-four years, but he seemed unable to clear his spirit tonight, as he had succeeded on all previous nights. He reached down to wash the bowl, feeling the chill water tug at his hand.

It took a great deal of courage for him to return to the cooking pot for a fourth bowl. He managed it only by remembering an old discipline, not used since priest-pupil days, of watching his footsteps and thinking of nothing except the next step he was going to take. Thus he was in front of the cooking pot and already reaching out with his bowl before he noticed the boy crouched behind the enormous pot.

The boy was hidden in shadow from the moonlight and the torches. Prosper was only able to see the outline of his upturned face from the glowing embers beneath the cooking pot. The boy whispered, "Don't tell him I'm here."

Prosper frowned, saying, "Don't tell who?" Then, too late, he recognized who the boy was.

He turned his head swiftly. Marching toward the pot, his sword unsheathed, was the dark-eyed soldier. Prosper's hand shook, and the bowl fell irretrievably into the pot. The soldier had threatened to kill him if Prosper spoke to his wife. What would the soldier do when he discovered this G.o.d-cursed man talking to his eldest son? Prosper began to think that the High Priest had not been so merciful when he declined to send Prosper to the fire of purification.

Fortunately, Prosper was not forced to decide whether his temporal duties required him to report the boy's location. Sighting Prosper next to the pot, the soldier frowned and veered his path away, in the direction of the military yard. "Orel!" the man shouted. "Orel, where are you?"

The boy, peering round the side of the pot, waited until the soldier had disappeared behind the hut that served as an armory before he rose to his feet. Seen in torchlight, he proved to be honey-colored like his father, with blue eyes like his mother. Wine juice was drying in the corner of his grimy face, and his hair remained as dishevelled as it had been during the service. He emitted a long sigh.

Amused, Prosper fought to retain his stern expression. "Your punishment won't be any lighter if you delay it, you know," he warned the boy.

"Oh, I haven't done anything wrong, truly," said the boy Orel. "It's just that Father wants me to show off the dagger skills I learned at the yard today."

"And you don't care for weapon-play?" Prosper felt immediate empathy. He could remember avoiding hunting lessons with his own father.

Orel seemed surprised by the question. "Of course I like it. I'm going to be a soldier, like Father is." Then, seeing Prosper's brow crease with puzzlement, he explained, "It's just that I don't like to do soldiering all the time. I want to talk to Huard so that I can ask him questions about the G.o.d's Law."

"Well," said Prosper, looking over the boy again and deciding that his original estimate of Orel's age had been correct, "you could ask Huard about that at your next catechism lesson."

Orel shook his head. "Huard lets all of us boys learn at our own pace, and I learned the catechism twice as quickly as the other boys did. I asked my father if I could continue taking lessons in the G.o.d's Language, because I enjoyed learning that."

"And he said no." It was a struggle at this point for Prosper to keep judgment of the father's actions out of his voice, but he succeeded.

"He said that if I wanted to become a priest, he'd be glad to send me to your training school, but that a temporal boy doesn't need any more scribe-learning than is necessary to master the catechism."

Prosper wrestled to hold several emotions in check, the foremost of which was the one raised by the realization that this boy knew who he was. Turning his attention to the demon of judgment, he waited until he had battled it back to a sufficient distance before saying, in a carefully neutral voice, "That may be true of most temporal boys, but I have known some who benefitted from further instruction. When I was young, a chieftain's son came to stay at the training school for a year. He had planned to become a priest, but he soon realized that his true vocation was to take up the work of his father. Even so, he often told me in later years that his year at the training school was the most valuable of his life, partly because of the discipline he learned while studying the ancient tongue."

"Discipline?" said Orel, as though this were a word foreign to him.

"Yes, because the ancient form of the G.o.d's Language is considerably more difficult than the modern form. The spelling, grammar, and especially the p.r.o.nunciation make it a great challenge to any pupil. The purpose of studying the ancient tongue, you see, is not to be able to read ancient ma.n.u.scripts, though that is a side benefit. The main benefit is to discipline the mind, which in turn leads to discipline of spirit."

The boy looked as delighted as though Prosper had just offered him a bag full of sugar b.a.l.l.s. "Do you think that Huard would teach me the ancient tongue if I asked?"

"Perhaps." Prosper had been trying to make up his mind about several matters, the main question being whether he was likely to live to the dawn if the dark-eyed soldier discovered that a G.o.d-cursed man had been talking to his son. Then it occurred to him that this risk might be part of his new discipline. He said firmly, "I have more time to spare than Huard does. I would be glad to teach you the ancient tongue. With your father's permission," he added as the boy's face lit up.

Orel's expression fell. After a moment he said, "My father has often said that I need more discipline."

"I can imagine," replied Prosper dryly, letting his gaze run over the boy's crumpled clothes. "Your leisure time is in the early evening, I take it? Then, if your father gives you permission to attend lessons with me, come to Huard's hut after tomorrow's evening service, and we will begin. Arrive punctually," he added, with as much sternness as he could manage with his suddenly buoyant spirit.

Orel, biting his lip as though his smile might spread too far if he failed to catch it back, began to dart away. Then he turned back suddenly, his gaze lowering to take in Prosper's stew-strewn clothing. After a moment, he reached out his hand and said hesitantly, "I have an extra sugar ball if you want it."

The sugar ball in Orel's hand was mashed, sticky, and grimy with dirt. Prosper took it from him with the same wonder and grat.i.tude that he would have reserved for an offering of the sacred flame.

CHAPTER THREE.

The following evening found Prosper kneeling by the bank of the river, contemplating the swift current.

The Black River, the tribal folk called it; it was named for the black rocks in the riverbed. On a day like this, when the river sparkled with suns.h.i.+ne, it was hard to think of it as black. The sun was still well above the horizon; the year was near midsummer, and dusk would not come until around the time of the evening meal.

He had forgotten to try the image of the river during the evening service, he realized. His thoughts had been wholly upon the boy scuffing his toes in the front row of the sanctuary. Prosper had been trying to read into the boy's movements knowledge of his new pupil. Only halfway through the silence did the demon of fear attack him, and now he was struggling to keep it at bay. The father would impress upon Orel what sort of man his prospective tutor was. Yet surely if the boy came, there could be no question of him turning from Prosper in horror.

He wondered why the prospect of these lessons had come to mean so much to him. It was easy enough to guess the answer, and he tried to focus his mind on ways to hide his eagerness from the boy. A pupil must never know whether his teacher enjoyed the teaching or hated it; a teacher's pleasure or pain was of no importance.

It came to Prosper that if he had been thinking in this manner upon his arrival at the camp, it would never have occurred to him to dwell upon his own pain at the chieftain's rejection. It was a new thought. He put the revelation aside in his mind to discuss it with Huard when he next asked the priest's advice on matters of discipline.

A soft step rustled through the gra.s.s nearby. Prosper rose and turned to see Orel standing next to Huard's doorway, looking hesitant. "It's all right," the boy said, before Prosper could ask. "I can take lessons from you."

Prosper tried to ignore the rush of relief that surged through him. Orel appeared more shy than before; there seemed no doubt he had received instructions from his father on what dangers might arise from a G.o.d-cursed man. Given the father's sentiments, the boy was probably now convinced that he was about to be murdered or ravished.

"You understand that I am under the curse?" Prosper said, trying to keep his voice level.

Orel nodded. "I saw you arrive, the first day. And my mother told me to stay away from you."

Prosper frowned. "Are you in the habit of disregarding your mother's warnings?"

Orel looked down at the gra.s.s and began scuffing it with his toes. "Not usually. But a priest's orders come first, don't they? Huard taught us in catechism cla.s.s that we should help those in need, even if we think they're the G.o.d's enemies. And if you teach me, you'll be doing a service to the G.o.d, won't you? And that will help drive the demons from you."

Prosper reflected that Orel had learned his catechism well. "Very well," he said, trying to keep the joy out of his voice. "Since your father has overruled your mother, I'll overlook your initial disobedience to her. Come over here."

Orel did so promptly, which was a good sign. Prosper, watching Orel's slouched posture as he walked, waited until Orel was standing beside him before he took the boy by the shoulders and said, "Stand up straight."

Orel did so, looking up at Prosper with puzzlement. Prosper ran his hand through the boy's tousled hair. "Your hair is not combed," he observed.

"No," said Orel, looking even more puzzled at this elementary observation.

"Tomorrow, when you arrive for lessons, I expect your hair to be combed, your clothes to be neat, your shoes to be dust-free, your fingernails to be trimmed, and your face to be some color other than that disgusting grime-grey. Have a sugar ball."

As he spoke, he stooped and retrieved from the riverbank the bag of sugar b.a.l.l.s that he had saved from the previous night's meal. He had already decided that, since he was taking the boy away from the time that he would normally spend playing with other boys, it would be too great a sacrifice to require him to give up the evenings' sweet-sharing as well. Besides, Prosper had relearned by now the proper tribal manner by which to bind oneself to another person.

The boy began to speak, then thought the better of it and was silent as he and Prosper made their way through the b.a.l.l.s in the bag. Only once the bag was folded and put aside did Orel ask, "How does combing my hair help me to learn the ancient tongue?"

"It is part of the discipline I am teaching you. If you are careless in matters concerning the body, you will become careless in matters concerning the mind. Why do you think it is that Huard is always so neat in his appearance? He did not look that way when he first arrived at my school, I can a.s.sure you."