“See, Etjole, see! Hunkapa know, Hunkapa guide!”
“Be quiet, Hunkapa,” the mildly annoyed herdsman admonished his hulking friend. The matted one fell silent.
“If you all know how to get to Ehl-Larimar, why cannot one of you guide us there?”
“Because the difficulty’s not in the knowin’, it’s in the goin’.” Peering behind his questioner, the elderly guide considered the herdsman’s blond hair. “Why you braid up your locks like that, man? Seen wimmens do it, but never ’til now a buck.”
“It is the style among the men of my village.” Uncharacteristically, Ehomba was becoming impatient with this short, skinny sage, who reminded him of chattering macaws. “What is so difficult about the going to Ehl-Larimar that you and all your colleagues refuse to take us?”
Aged eyes that had seen much rolled in their sockets as if loose. “Why, out west there’s dangerous wild critters everywhere, some of ’em monstrous big, others with long fangs that drip poison.” To emphasize the latter, he protruded his upper jaw far beyond the lower and flapped it to simulate biting motions. “First you have to get through the Hexen Mountains. Then there’s the demons what live in the interior, and hostile tribes of things thet ain’t always human.” He was waving his birdlike arms wildly now, using them to magnify the drama of his own declamations.
“Get past them, and then there’s the Tortured Lands, and beyond thet, the Curridgian Mountains with their ice fields and rock slides.” Lack of wind finally forced him to call a halt to the hymn of horrors.