"
"Where is your home, senor?" Rodriguez asked.
"It is Shadow Valley," he said.
One never saw Rodriguez fail to understand anything: if he could
not clear a situation up he did not struggle with it. Morano
rubbed his chin: he had heard of Shadow Valley only dimly, for all
the travellers he had known out of the north had gone round it.
Rodriguez and Morano bent their heads and watched a design that
was growing out of the gold. And as the design grew under the hand
of the strange worker he began to talk of the horses. He spoke as
though his plans had been clearly established by edict, and as
though no others could be.
"When I have gone with two horses," he said, "ride hard with the
other two till you reach the village named Lowlight, and take them
to the forge of Fernandez the smith, where one will shoe them who
is not Fernandez."
And he waved his hand northwards. There was only one road. Then
all his attention fell back again to his work on the gold coin;
and when those blue eyes were turned away there seemed nothing
left to question. And now Rodriguez saw the design was a crown, a
plain gold circlet with oak leaves rising up from it. And this
woodland emblem stood up out of the gold, for the worker had
hollowed the coin away all around it, and was sloping it up to the
edge. Little was said by the watchers in the wonder of seeing the
work, for no craft is very far from the line beyond which is
magic, and the man in the leather coat was clearly a craftsman:
and he said nothing for he worked at a craft.
Pages:
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134