Free Angus Wells - The Kingdoms 03 by The Way Beneath (v1.1)

think so?”
                 “Aye,”
she said gravely, “and you must be tired for it.”
                 “Not
too tired,” he answered, reaching for her.
                 She
stepped toward the couch and his hands found her hips, drawing her toward him
until her knees met the side and she fell forward, onto him.
                 “In
feet, not much tired at all,” he whispered throatily, mouth against her neck.
                 Wynett
shuddered deliciously and turned her face down to meet his exploring lips.
“Nor,” she gasped, “ am I.”
                 Derwen
Pars had been a fisherman all his life, as had his father and his before him.
His earliest memory of the Idre was of lying on a warm blanket nested in a coil
of rope, the smell of fish about him, and his father lifting him out over the
prow of the boat to dangle above the blue water, gurgling as wavelets splashed
his bare feet. More clearly he could recall the first time he had taken active
part in his father’s venture, nervous that he might fail and delighted when
Verran Pars declared him a fisherman bom, as they hauled in the net filled with
the small silvery blue fish called pardes. He had not yet reached his tenth year then, but thereafter he accompanied
Verran each day and, once he was deemed old enough, each night the little boat
put out.
                 In
thirty years Derwen Pars had come to know the Idre and her bounty as well as
any of his calling. He knew her calm and when she was storm-whipped; knew her
currents and her moods; when and where the shoals of parde would run, and where
to cast a line for the great dark red savve. He had seen his father drown when their boat turned turtle in a spring
floodtide and refused to let that tragedy deter him from pursuing the only life
he knew, or wanted to know. He had taken his father’s place then, refurbishing
the damaged craft and ignoring his mother’s pleas that he seek some safer occupation. Instead, he had become the finest fisherman in Drisse,
purchasing a fine, stone-built house large enough to contain both his mother
and his new wife, later the three children, none of whom—to his carefully
hidden disappointment—showed any aptitude for the watery life. He had taken
each one out on the river and finally agreed to their becoming something other
than fisherfolk, which pleased their grandmother, whose tolerance of the river
had turned to distinct antipathy after Verran’s drowning, and was not
altogether to his wife’s dislike, for while she loved her husband she did not
share his regard for the great waterway, and prayed regularly in the little
chapel at the center of the small town that the Lady guard him while he plied
his trade.
                 So
far it seemed her prayers were heard, for Derwen was a wealthy man, so
successful that he now owned two boats, both new, and employed two hired men to
man the larger Volalle while he
preferred to work alone in the Verr ana that he had named for his father.
                 On
this night, with the half-full moon bright enough in a clear sky, the Idre
shining silver as his mother’s hair and the pocheta running north in shoals large as any he had seen, he had both boats out, the
largest of his nets strung between diem to catch the succulent fish. Gille Oman and Festyn Lewal crewed the Volalle, drifting her on a sheet
anchor as Derwen manuevered the Verrana into position with a single stem sweep, spreading the skein wide to enmesh the
northbound acquatics. He watched the master line cautiously, shipping his oar
and tossing out his own anchor as the heavy cable reached the correct tension,
settling on the stem boards as he waited for the fish to come to him. Farther
out, and both up-and downriver, he could see the hunt outlines of other craft
as they positioned their nets, dark bulks against the argent filigree of the
water. It would, he calculated, be a profitable