Free Carnivores of Light and Darkness by Alan Dean Foster Page B

think that I am fighting with you.”
    Her lips, which in another time and place he would gladly have stilled with his own, tightened. “What a maddening man you are, Etjole Ehomba! You must pardon my forwardness. In my profession I am not used to dealing with men or women of principle. So I am having difficulty deciding what you are, and how to deal with you.”
    “I told you,” he explained patiently, “I am—”
    “A simple herdsman; yes, yes!” Rising abruptly from her chair, she turned away from him and stalked toward the rear portal. “A simple herdsman with an answer for everything. Worse, you are right.” Whirling around, violet eyes blazing, she wagged a warning finger at him. “If you insist on pursuing the course you have chosen and succeed in following it to its end, you are going to die, Etjole Ehomba! Do you hear what I am saying; do you understand my words? You are going to die! What, finally, do you have to say to that?”
    His voice was as calm and controlled as ever. “You have a very pretty finger.”
    Dropping her arm, she inhaled sharply. “I think you’re right, and that I was wrong to ever think otherwise. You
are
a simple herdsman, uncomplicated and disingenuous. You’re too naïve to be frightened. That—or you are the most subtle of sorcerers I have ever met.” Her tone thawed. “Many are the men who have pursued me for months, years even, without success, but you have ensorcelled me in a matter of moments, and with me doing most of the talking at that.” She shook her head slowly as she regarded him, a baffled look on her face.
    “Who are you, Etjole Ehomba? What are you?”
    Before he could reply yet again that he was but a simple herdsman from the south, she had spun on the heel of her slipper and vanished through the rear-facing beaded portal. The meeting was over. For an instant, he considered following her, to try to explain further, to do his best to assuage her upset and unease. But it might very well be dark in whatever back room she had vanished into, and the walls would certainly be closer to one another, his options for flight narrower. Nor was he entirely sure he would fight very hard to escape. Best not to place himself in a position where he might be forced to find out.
    The entrance beckoned behind him. Leaving himself no more time to think, which might prove unsettling, or to feel, which could prove worse, he turned and departed.
    It was only later, when he was safely back among the boisterous, jostling crowd in the bazaar, that he was struck by the realization that she had not charged him for his visit. Dipping one hand into a pocket of his kilt, he absently fingered the little sack of gravel from the beach near the village. The simplistic, repetitive activity always helped to remind him of the village and to strengthen his memories of home. The more he thought of the dazzling seer Rael, the more he needed that reinforcement. And if her words were to be believed, he had exerted as profoundly unsettling an effect on her as she had on him. Their lovemaking would have been volcanic.
    But it was not to be. He pushed on through the crowd. There were preparations to be made. If, as she had told him, he would find no boat master in this country willing to attempt an ocean crossing, then he would have to seek farther north. That meant restocking the few basic supplies he could carry on his back. Salt, sugar, a few carefully chosen spices, some basic medicinal powders, and whatever else he could afford that might prove useful over the duration of an extended overland trek. If he was fortunate, he might learn of a caravan of some sort traveling north and join them for guidance and mutual protection. But since he could not count on doing so, he had to be prepared to press on alone.
    Of the lands to the north of the Kohoboth he knew little, only what village oldsters like Fhastal and Meruba mumbled around communal campfires. Half and more of that might be as much sheer