After some idle conversation, he said, “I think you know that I am due to retire soon as master of the tawyers and tanners corps? My chief boy will take my place. I’m getting old and he long ago knew all I have to teach.”
“You come here because of that?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I come here, Mother Shay, because I—I experience an old man’s admiration for you, for your person and your worth… . No, let me say it. I have always served and loved this community, and I believe you do the same, though you have the opposition of many men. So I wanted to do you a good turn while I was able to.”
“You’re a good man, Datnil Skar. Oldorando knows it. The community needs good people.”
Sighing, he nodded. “I have served Embruddock—or Oldorando as we should call it—every day of my life, and have never left it. Yet scarcely a day’s gone by …” He broke off in his shy way, smiled, and said, “I believe I am speaking to a kindred spirit when I say that scarcely a day has gone by since I was a lad when I haven’t wondered … wondered what was happening in other places, far away from here.”
He paused, cleared his throat, then said more briskly, “I’ll tell you a tale. It’s only brief. I remember one terrible winter when I was a lad when the phagors attacked, and disease and famine followed. Many people died. And the phagors were dying too, although we didn’t know it at the time. It was so dark, I swear days are brighter now… . Anyhow, the phagors left behind a human boy during the slaughter. His name was—I’m ashamed to, say I’ve forgotten it, but to the best of my belief it was something like Krindlesheddy. A long name. Once I knew it clearly. The years have made me forget.
“Krindlesheddy had come from a country a long way to the north, Sibornal. He said that Sibornal was a land of perpetual glaciers. I was selected to be chief boy in my corps, and in Sibornal he was to be a priest, so we were both dedicated to our calling. He—Krindlesheddy or whatever his name was—thought our life was easy. The geysers kept Oldorando warm.
“As a young member of the priesthood, my friend had belonged with some colonists who moved south to escape the cold. They came to a better land by a river. There they had to fight with the local inhabitants of a realm called—well, the name has gone after these many years. A great battle raged, in which Krindlesheddy—if that was his name—was injured. The survivors fled, only to be caught by raiding phagors. It was mere fortune that he escaped them here. Or perhaps they left him because he was wounded.
“We did what we could to help the lad, but he died after a month. I cried for him. I was only young. Yet even then I envied him because he’d seen something of the world. He told me that in Sibornal the ice came in many colours and was beautiful.”
As Master Datnil finished his story, sitting meekly beside Shay Tal, Vry entered the room, on her way to the floor above.
He smiled kindly at her, saying to Shay Tal, “Don’t send Vry away. I know she’s your chief boy and you trust her, as I wish I could trust my chief boy. Let her hear what I have to say.” He laid his wooden box on the floor in front of him. “I have brought the Master Book of our corps for you to see.”
Shay Tal looked as if she would faint. She knew that if this borrowing was discovered, the makers corps would kill the master without hesitation… . She could guess at the inner struggle the old man had gone through before bringing it. She wrapped her thin arms about him and kissed him on his wrinkled forehead.
Vry came and knelt down by him, excitement on her face.
“Let’s have a look!” she exclaimed, reaching out a hand, forgetting her diffidence.
He put his hand over hers, detainingly.