Read 4: Witches' Blood for Free Online Page B

mentioned it with a tone that struck John as almost enthusiastic.
    “Now that you’ve earned your braid, you’ll be allowed to attend. You won’t believe everything you’ll see there. I still remember the first time my father took me. The air was like perfume, with so many scents. Southern apples and honey sweets. Wine. And there were dancers and singers all the way from Vundomu. And the things there, glass lamps in every color you could imagine, embroidered bolts of silks, fat roasting dogs.” He grinned wide, exposing the few teeth he had left. “I feel like a boy again just thinking about it.”
    John found himself smiling at innocence of Samsango’s nostalgia.
    “You’d better watch for the game tables, though, and the wine sellers.” Samsango’s expression grew stern and John couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “They’ll take advantage of even a poor old ushvun and then coldly turn him away when his few stones are gone.”
    “I’ll be careful,” John assured him.
    “It’s easily said, but harder to do. You get swept up in the music and colors and all the strange new people. And the dancing women. A young man like you has to watch out for them particularly. They’re so lovely that it’s easy to forget yourself. Then the prior will be shouting at you for months.”
    “Do you want me to keep an eye out for you?” John asked.
    “At my age?” Samsango laughed. “The prior would proclaim it one of Parfir’s miracles if I were to get up to trouble with a dancing girl. No, I’m just warning you. Some of these girls come all the way from Nurjima. They’re clever and beautiful and some are a little wicked. A young man like you has to be careful.”
    “I will be.”
    “Should you keep an eye out for me?” Samsango shook his head as he repeated John’s offer. “You can be so naive, Jahn. As if a lovely city girl is going to chase down an old prune like me.”
    “Some people like prunes,” John replied.
    “Not poor prunes,” Samsango said. “Nobody likes a poor prune.”
    “I like you.”
    “I like you as well, Jahn. But you’re not much of a substitute for a dancing girl.” Samsango patted John’s hand, as if he was indulging a child. “Now that bread needs to be turned, doesn’t it?”
    Taking the old man’s implicit suggestion, John opened the oven door. Heat washed over him like a sudden afternoon sun. He wasn’t very experienced at turning trays of bread, having spent far more time on the practice grounds than in the kitchens. He slid the large, oven peel under the tray of bread and rotated it, careful not to upset the tray and send the rolls bouncing into the fire. The heat swallowed his arms and rushed over his face. Beads of sweat immediately rose across his brow and just as quickly evaporated.
    Heat rolled over him in waves, growing steadily more encompassing. Flickers of discomfort built into an intensity. John could smell the fine hairs on his arms scorching. His fingers trembled as the sensation grew to searing pain.
    When he finally finished and jerked the peel out of the oven, the warm air of the kitchen felt frigid against his hands.
    “Oven too hot for you?” Samsango asked.
    John only nodded.
    “I used to be the same way,” Samsango assured him. “But, you know, it’s like anything. You get used to it.”
    “I don’t know if I want to get used to it.” John scowled at his red fingers.
    “It can’t be helped.” Samsango shrugged. “You do something enough and it becomes part of your nature.”
    John frowned at the inherent truth of Samsango’s words. It was intrinsically human to adapt to his current surroundings. He had been living in Basawar for two years. Soon, it would be three. His body had grown used to hard labor. His skin was tanned and callused, his hair drawn back into an ushvun’s braid. On the rare occasions that he caught his own reflection in a polished mirror, it looked strange to him. He could stare at himself and find nothing that