Free The Book of Athyra by Steven Brust Page A

so far below them, dotted with people bathing, washing clothes, or just talking. Savn tried to view the scene as if it were new; the river rushing in from the right, turning sharply around the Black Rocks, foaming white, then suddenly wideninginto the flats, brown against tan, then narrowing gradually once more as it cut down into the plains and began turning south, toward the sea, many impossible hundreds of miles away.
    “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Savn.
    “Is it?” said Vlad, without turning his head.
    “Don’t you think so?”
    “Maybe. Nature usually doesn’t excite me very much. I’m impressed by what man makes of his world, not what we started with.”
    “Oh.” Savn considered. “I guess I’m just the opposite.”
    “Yes.”
    “Does it matter?”
    Vlad looked at him, and something like amusement glittered for a moment in his eyes. Then he turned back to watching the river. “Yes and no,” he said. “A couple of years ago I met a philosopher who told me that those like me build, while those like you take more pleasure in life.”
    “Aren’t there those who like both?”
    “Yes. According to this lady, they become artists.”
    “Oh. Do you enjoy life?”
    “Me? Yes, but I’m naturally lucky.”
    “Oh.” Savn thought back to what the Easterner told him the night before. “You must be, to still be alive with people trying to kill you.”
    “Oh, no. That isn’t luck. I’m alive because I’m good enough to survive.”
    “Then what do you mean?”
    “I’m lucky that, living the way I do, with people trying to kill me, I can still take pleasure in life. Not everyone can, and I think if you can’t, there isn’t much you can do about it.”
    “Oh. I’ve never met a philosopher.”
    “I hope you do some day; they’re always worth talking to.”
    “Pae says such things are a waste of time.”
    “Your Pae, I’m sorry to say, is wrong.”
    “Why?”
    “Because everything is worth examining, and if you don’t examine your view of the world, you are still subject to it, and you find yourself doing things that—never mind.”
    “I think I understand.”
    “Do you? Good.” After a moment he said, as if to himself, “I learned a lot from that lady. I was sorry I had to kill her.”
    Savn looked at him, but the Easterner didn’t seem to be joking. They continued watching the River Flats and said nothing more for a while.

5
    I will not marry a blessing priest,
    I will not marry a blessing priest,
    In his devotions I’d be least.
    Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!
    Step on out
. . .
    T HEY WERE CLOSE ENOUGH so that Savn could identify some of the people below, more by how they dressed and moved than by their features. There were a few whose names he knew, but he knew none of the people well, and for the first time he wondered why that was. Smallcliff was closer to Bigcliff than to either Whiterock or Notthereyet, but those were the places he had visited, and from a little traveling and from his work with Master Wag, he knew a few people who lived in each of those villages; but the dwellers below were strangers, even those he could identify and had spoken with.
    Mae and Pae hardly ever mentioned them at all, except for an occasional reference Pae made to its being filthy to bathe in the same place that you wash your clothes. Yet when those from below came to visit Master Wag, they seemed pleasant enough, and Savn didn’t see any difference.
    Odd, though, that he’d never thought about it before. Next to him, Vlad was watching them with single-minded concentration that reminded Savn of something he’d seen once, long ago, but couldn’t quite remember. He felt something akin to fear as he made the comparison, however.
    “Vlad?” said Savn at last.
    “Yes?”
    “Those people are . . . never mind.”
    “They are what?”
    Savn haltingly tried to tell the Easterner what he’d been thinking about them, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words, so eventually he shrugged and fell